1.5 Software Engineering
Software Engineering is the set of processes and tools to develop software. Software Engineering is the combination of all the tools, techniques, and processes that used in software production. Therefore Software Engineering encompasses all those things that are used in software production like:
years. The design of Ada language was considered as the considerable effort in software engineering.
These days object-oriented programming is widely being used. If programming languages will not support object-orientation then it will be very difficult to implement object-oriented design using object-oriented principles. All these efforts made the basis of software engineering.
Well-Engineered Software
Let’s talk something about what is well-engineered software. Well-engineered software is one that has the following characteristics.
Software has very close relationship with economics. Whenever we talk about engineering systems we always first analyze whether this is economically feasible or not. Therefore you have to engineer all the activities of software development while keeping its economical feasibility intact.
The major challenges for a software engineer is that he has to build software within limited time and budget in a cost-effective way and with good quality Therefore well-engineered software has the following characteristics.
The Balancing Act!
Software Engineering is actually the balancing act. You have to balance many things like cost, user friendliness, Efficiency, Reliability etc. You have to analyze which one is the more important feature for your software is it reliability, efficiency, user friendliness or something else. There is always a trade-off among all these requirements of software. It may be the case that if you try to make it more user-friendly then the efficiency may suffer. And if you try to make it more cost-effective then reliability may suffer. Therefore
there is always a trade-off between these characteristics of software.
These requirements may be conflicting. For example, there may be tension among the following:
Software Engineers always confront with the challenge to make a good balance of all these tings depending on the requirements of the particular software system at hand. He should analyze how much weight should all these things get such that it will have acceptable quality, acceptable performance and will have acceptable user-interface. In some software the efficiency is more important and desirable. For example if we talk
about a cruise missile or a nuclear reactor controller that are droved by the software systems then performance and reliability is far more important than the cost-effectiveness and user-friendliness. In these cases if your software does not react within a certain amount of time then it may result in the disaster like Chernobyl accident.
Therefore software development is a process of balancing among different characteristics of software described in the previous section. And it is an art to come up with such a good balance and that art can be learned from experience.
Software Engineering is the set of processes and tools to develop software. Software Engineering is the combination of all the tools, techniques, and processes that used in software production. Therefore Software Engineering encompasses all those things that are used in software production like:
- Programming Language
- Programming Language Design
- Software Design Techniques
- Tools
- Testing
- Maintenance
- Development etc.
years. The design of Ada language was considered as the considerable effort in software engineering.
These days object-oriented programming is widely being used. If programming languages will not support object-orientation then it will be very difficult to implement object-oriented design using object-oriented principles. All these efforts made the basis of software engineering.
Well-Engineered Software
Let’s talk something about what is well-engineered software. Well-engineered software is one that has the following characteristics.
Software has very close relationship with economics. Whenever we talk about engineering systems we always first analyze whether this is economically feasible or not. Therefore you have to engineer all the activities of software development while keeping its economical feasibility intact.
The major challenges for a software engineer is that he has to build software within limited time and budget in a cost-effective way and with good quality Therefore well-engineered software has the following characteristics.
The Balancing Act!
Software Engineering is actually the balancing act. You have to balance many things like cost, user friendliness, Efficiency, Reliability etc. You have to analyze which one is the more important feature for your software is it reliability, efficiency, user friendliness or something else. There is always a trade-off among all these requirements of software. It may be the case that if you try to make it more user-friendly then the efficiency may suffer. And if you try to make it more cost-effective then reliability may suffer. Therefore
there is always a trade-off between these characteristics of software.
These requirements may be conflicting. For example, there may be tension among the following:
- Cost vs. Efficiency
- Cost vs. Reliability
- Efficiency vs. User-interface
Software Engineers always confront with the challenge to make a good balance of all these tings depending on the requirements of the particular software system at hand. He should analyze how much weight should all these things get such that it will have acceptable quality, acceptable performance and will have acceptable user-interface. In some software the efficiency is more important and desirable. For example if we talk
about a cruise missile or a nuclear reactor controller that are droved by the software systems then performance and reliability is far more important than the cost-effectiveness and user-friendliness. In these cases if your software does not react within a certain amount of time then it may result in the disaster like Chernobyl accident.
Therefore software development is a process of balancing among different characteristics of software described in the previous section. And it is an art to come up with such a good balance and that art can be learned from experience.
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