A Tale of Three Disciplines and a Revolution Name: Parameswara reddy Course: CS551 Instructor: Yugi lee

Three disciplines 1.Circuit engineering 2.Genetic engineering 3.Software engineering

What a disciplined science and engineering is? 1.Standard notation and vocabulary. 2.Organizations for defining and implementing standards. 3.Mathematical theorems to prove the correctness of the complex functionality- e.g.. normal forms 4.Good academic curricula in par with industry standards.

Where is software engineering? Even with same level of complexity and similar Environment compared to the other disciplines, software engineering is lacking characteristics of disciplined science and engineering. Effects: 1.Failure of software systems. 2.Risk to public safety 3.Loss of huge amounts of money

Circuit Engineering Foundation laid with a Boolean function Every Circuit corresponds to a function-simple or complex Complex functions developed from primary operators Developed normal forms for complex functions. Well defined components developed, documented with input-output relationships for reuse. Cont.,

Concept of Finite state machines with inventions in Physics and engineering revolutionized the field. Consensus, standard notation, industry practice and University curricula make it well-defined discipline.

Genetic engineering Genetic engineering is all about what a gene does, where it is located and which causes what phenomenon. Development of genetic engineering parallels with circuit engineering in terms of mathematical applications and reuse of results. Much like circuit engineering, this too has consensus, academic curricula, Industry practice and standard notations derived from life sciences, mathematics and computer science making it a disciplined science and engineering.

Revolution – A three front solution Changing face of software engineering 1.Certification 2.Licensing 3.Curriculum Reform

Certification Defining certification protocols for hardware and software implementations Certification Of programming language compilers and enforcing sound practices in implementation Certifying consumer products Certifying medical related products and products related to public safety

Implementation Problems Certifying a product requires a exhaustive testing which is almost impossible to do. With many technologies in operation, it becomes difficult to certify products developed with such changing technologies.

licensing Regulatory system to license developers and processes involved in developing medical, financial and machine-critical systems

Implementation Problems Role of Software engineer (Practitioner) and processes keeps changing with change in technology which makes Licensing difficult to implement.

Curriculum reform It eliminates the root cause of software engineering problems. Degree of any disciplinary consensus depends on the academic curriculum. If there are three schools of thought, there will be three approaches for the discipline. Accreditation and standards bodies must approve the curricula. Well defined curricula must conforms to the industry standards.

Implementation Problems Industry follows numerous standards and it’s difficult to come up with a consensus to follow in curricula. A little can do with getting consensus between curricula in effect. Some of the industry standards are proprietary, not open to curricula.

Conclusion Solution seems to make software engineering process more complex and increasing cost of development. It takes many years to implement the solutions that the author proposed, by that time changing the development scenario is almost impossible. Revolution must have come up in the beginning of the filed itself. coming up with a revolution in the midway doesn’t give any advantage. Solution doesn’t seem to be practicable.