79. Software Engineering

Software engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches. That is the application of engineering to software. The application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software; that is, the application of engineering to software. If a system behaves like expected at a defined and predictable level of reliability, and does not behave otherwise at a defined and predictable level of reliability, then that system possesses the quality of being engineered, and was probably produced by an engineering process. If your team is capable of making accurate and credible predictions about the performance of your software in deployment, then you are probably practicing some form of software engineering.

The term software engineering first appeared in the 1968 NATO Software Engineering Conference and was meant to provoke thought regarding the current "software crisis" at the time. Since then, it has continued as a profession and field of study dedicated to creating software that is of higher quality, cheaper, maintainable, and quicker to build. Since the field is still relatively young compared to its sister fields of engineering, there is still much work and debate around what software engineering actually is, and if it deserves the title engineering. It has grown organically out of the limitations of viewing software as just programming. Software development is a term sometimes preferred by practitioners in the industry who view software engineering as too heavy-handed and constrictive to the malleable process of creating software.

Software Engineering describe the systematic steps to be followed for developing a software; just like developing a hardware we follow the rules like it's design pattern, composition etc similarly the software goes through various steps known as "Software Development Life Cycle " or SDLC. This includes phases like requirement gathering and analysis designing, coding & testing, system integration and testing, deployment andMaintenance.

For software engineering to be fully known as a legitimate engineering discipline and a recognized profession, consensus on a core body of knowledge is imperative. This fact is well illustrated by Starr when he defines what can be considered a legitimate discipline and a recognized profession. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the history of the medical profession in the USA, he states that the legitimization of professional authority involves three distinctive claims: first, that the knowledge and competence of the professional have been validated by a community of his or her peers; second, that this consensually validated knowledge rests on rational, scientific grounds; and third, that the professional’s judgment and advice are oriented toward a set of substantive values, such as health. These aspects of legitimacy correspond to the kinds of attributes collegial, cognitive, and moral usually embodied in the term profession.