Weblogs Forum – Is software engineering, math, science, or what?

From John D. Mitchell:

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Allen, Peter Siebel [who’s publishing a book as we speak called Practical Common Lisp], and I were talking about this whole software education problem at last week’s excuse for free food (ahem, I mean the meet and greet that Apress threw for Joel [I swear that I had nothing to do with the fire alarms triggering the flooding of the building where it was supposed to be held] :-). The point of the discussion was not that software is or isn’t “science”, “engineering”, “math”, etc. but rather that current software education isn’t focused enough on software as a discipline of writing (and reading). That is, we need more thought, education, and practice at making software a useful form of truly literate literature.

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Now, back to the question that started all of this discussion. Software is something wondrous. It is not merely engineering, math, science, or even art. Software is all of the above and more. People struggle and create so much suffering because they keep trying to force it into their familiar pigeonholes. Luckily, the solution is really simple… Software is a functional bridge between the abstract and reality.