Lecture 1 (Part I)

Question 1

When and Why was ‘Software Engineering’ created?

Answer 1

The term ‘Software Engineering’ was created in 1968 to address the software crisis. It was created because, individual approaches to problems were not capable of begin scaled-up for larger and more complex problems.

Question 2

Define ‘Software Engineering ‘

Answer 2

• Engineering discipline concerned with entire software production from system specification to maintenance.
• concerned with ‘professional software development’

Question 3

What are the main activities of software engineering?

Answer 3

**Acronym: SDEV

Main activities are:
- Specification
- Development
- Evolution
- Validation

Question 4

What are some general issues of Softwares ?

Answer 4

1. Heterogeneity: Softwares are distributed amongst different computer and mobile devices
2. Business and Social change: Society is evolving rapidly, leading to changes in businesses and society in general. This requires existing softwares to be constantly updates alongside development of new softwares.
3. Safety, trust and privacy: Since our lives are heavily dependent and intertwined with different devices/softwares, this is extremely important.

Question 5

What are the fundamentals of SE?

Answer 5

Fundamentals of SE are:
- Softwares should be developed using managed and understood development processes.

• Dependability & Performance: They should be reliable, available but also provide adequate performance.
• Understanding and managing software specification and requirements
• Reuse software where possible instead of writing new code