On the Notion of Software Engineering: A Problem Solving Perspective

Despite of extensive efforts, software projects have to cope with the recurring problems of the software crisis. We argue that the software crisis problem is more deeply rooted than it is generally perceived and that the problem is in the first place conceptual rather than technical. This implies that software engineering as it is currently perceived and applied may lack some fundamental concepts that are necessary to produce software systems costeffectively. This paper presents a broad and general view of software engineering in order to grasp its essence and identify the concepts that are necessary but are not well-defined or even missing. It has been shown that software engineering, mature engineering disciplines and philosophy all aim at solving problems in their own context. By using a common problem solving model, an in-depth comparative analysis of software engineering with mature engineering and philosophy is provided. This comparative analysis helps us to identify a number of issues of current software engineering practices.