Outline of a Paradigm Change in Software Engineering

This paper is a contribution of a special kind: rather than describing one specific result, I will attempt to give a synopsis of an ongoing controversy between rivalling ideas and attitudes underlying our scientific and technical work in software engineering. In doing so, I will argue for a shift of emphasis which I term a paradigm change. This change seems urgent in a situation where software as part of computer-based systems affects even more areas of the living human world, while the existing discipline of software engineering has no way of dealing with this systematically.