Practitioners Beware: The New Model for Software Engineering May Turn out to be the next 'Holy Roman Empire'

An interesting phenomenon has evolved over the past 30-years, as several titles have been suggested for attempt to anthropomorphize the construct of ‘professionalism’ in Software practice, these titles include: programmer, engineer, architect and developer. The most recent iteration in the evolution of professionalizing the practice of Software (with a capital S) has been in the form of the professional engineer (PE) license. The on-going trend for definitively narrating the discipline and practice of Software manufacture motivates the discussion presented in this paper. The paper makes the argument that the constant struggle to define Software practice with a descriptive title, may in fact be as elusive as the historical failed attempt to define the ancient Holy Roman Empire. The 18th Century author Voltaire is credited with the famous phrase about the Holy Roman Empire, that it was “Neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.” This paper explores whether Software Engineering might in fact be, neither software, nor engineering, nor architecture – nor holy, nor Roman for that matter. The paper concludes with a proposed visual model to clarify thinking in this area.