2 HN users recommended this talk2 months2015–2018score 2.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Recommended in debates over whether software is real engineering, as a well-argued case that building is cheap relative to simulating.
Glenn Vanderburg argues at the O'Reilly Software Architecture Conference that software development is an engineering discipline, even if immature. He contends the discredited body of knowledge called software engineering has led people to wrongly reject the label.
Careful. Software engineering is very much a real engineering discipline, and it is a major cultural failing to not recognize it as such. Required viewing: [this video]
I don't have a particular dog in this fight, but I thought this is interesting: The last O'Reilly Software Architecture Conference had a talk by Glenn Vanderburg titled "why software development is an engineering discipline": [this video] I think the author of the blogpost does a lot of the things discussed in the talk (e.g. comparing it mostly to civil engineering as opposed to all the other engineering disciplines).
Argues software development is an engineering discipline.
Actually, it is fundamentally different in that just building the thing / just running the experiment is cheaper than doing the simulations or proofs. Every other discipline does simulations because actually running the experiment is magnitudes more expensive and time consuming. See "Why software development is an engineering discipline" [this video]
Argues software differs because building is cheaper than simulating.
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