For the past couple of months, I've been doing a deep dive into engineering and engineering philosophy, and I have some thoughts about this article.
The biggest thing I noticed was that, even though there was an acknowledgment of the lack of a singular definition of engineering, the definition used throughout was tied to a linear model of innovation. I've been able to trace this thinking to the 1920s, with a growth in popularity in the 1940s and 1950s. A prime example is Vannevar Bush's Science: The Endless Frontier. Although the report had some good outcomes, like leading to the establishment of the National Science Foundation, Bush's own autobiography acknowledged that this model was a disservice to engineers and engineering, as it led to many engineering accomplishments being touted as scientific achievements and scientists getting credit for the work of engineers in popular literature and the press.
There aren't too many other views of engineering out there. A handful of contemporary authors keep coming up: Florman, Vincenti, Ferguson, Koen, and Petroski. Most other things I've read tend to cite one or more of these authors and continue to build upon their foundations.
Picking up any one of the other perspectives on engineering would let you make another connection to the 1968 NATO conference. There were really three camps that offered definitions about what software engineering should be. People like Dijkstra, Hoare, Naur, and Wirth focused on applying mathematics and computer science and on theory building. McIlroy, Bauer, and Bemer looked at how software development could learn from industrial engineering and mass production. David and Ross emphasized practical problem solving. By the 1969 conference, the practical problem-solving piece had dropped out of focus, even though this is very closely related to how other engineering philosophers looked at engineering.
Another aspect from some of the engineering philosophers is the craft roots of engineering. This also tends to disprove the linear model of innovation. Engineering existed well before modern science, and there are several cases of engineering development without a robust scientific understanding of the principles that enable it. Modern science became a tool in the toolbox of modern engineers, but it's not a precursor to engineering. The craft roots have been there all along and were part of engineering education up into the early 1900s. This can tie back into Agile Software Development and the software craftsmanship movement of the 1990s and early 2000s.
The paragraph about application programming being removed from the debates in the 1960s misses a key point. In the 1960s, "software" was shorthand for "systems software", or the stuff provided by computer manufacturers to allow people to make their computers do stuff. Application programs were not really considered software until at least the 1970s. It's a bit nuanced, but there's a reason for excluding this group of people: it was seen as a different thing entirely.
Finally, no mention of Margaret Hamilton. Failing to even mention Hamilton and her use of software engineering as an aspiration to elevate programmers to the same status as the other engineering disciplines on the Apollo program misses a huge moment in the development of the idea of software engineering.
TomOwens · · focus · HN ↗
The biggest thing I noticed was that, even though there was an acknowledgment of the lack of a singular definition of engineering, the definition used throughout was tied to a linear model of innovation. I've been able to trace this thinking to the 1920s, with a growth in popularity in the 1940s and 1950s. A prime example is Vannevar Bush's Science: The Endless Frontier. Although the report had some good outcomes, like leading to the establishment of the National Science Foundation, Bush's own autobiography acknowledged that this model was a disservice to engineers and engineering, as it led to many engineering accomplishments being touted as scientific achievements and scientists getting credit for the work of engineers in popular literature and the press.
There aren't too many other views of engineering out there. A handful of contemporary authors keep coming up: Florman, Vincenti, Ferguson, Koen, and Petroski. Most other things I've read tend to cite one or more of these authors and continue to build upon their foundations.
Picking up any one of the other perspectives on engineering would let you make another connection to the 1968 NATO conference. There were really three camps that offered definitions about what software engineering should be. People like Dijkstra, Hoare, Naur, and Wirth focused on applying mathematics and computer science and on theory building. McIlroy, Bauer, and Bemer looked at how software development could learn from industrial engineering and mass production. David and Ross emphasized practical problem solving. By the 1969 conference, the practical problem-solving piece had dropped out of focus, even though this is very closely related to how other engineering philosophers looked at engineering.
Another aspect from some of the engineering philosophers is the craft roots of engineering. This also tends to disprove the linear model of innovation. Engineering existed well before modern science, and there are several cases of engineering development without a robust scientific understanding of the principles that enable it. Modern science became a tool in the toolbox of modern engineers, but it's not a precursor to engineering. The craft roots have been there all along and were part of engineering education up into the early 1900s. This can tie back into Agile Software Development and the software craftsmanship movement of the 1990s and early 2000s.
The paragraph about application programming being removed from the debates in the 1960s misses a key point. In the 1960s, "software" was shorthand for "systems software", or the stuff provided by computer manufacturers to allow people to make their computers do stuff. Application programs were not really considered software until at least the 1970s. It's a bit nuanced, but there's a reason for excluding this group of people: it was seen as a different thing entirely.
Finally, no mention of Margaret Hamilton. Failing to even mention Hamilton and her use of software engineering as an aspiration to elevate programmers to the same status as the other engineering disciplines on the Apollo program misses a huge moment in the development of the idea of software engineering.
kerblang · · focus · HN ↗
Did you mean "were not"?
TomOwens · · focus · HN ↗