"Software engineering is the part of computer science which is too difficult for the computer scientist." (Friedrich Bauer, "Software Engineering", 1971)
"[Software engineering is the] establishment and use of sound engineering principles to obtain economically software that is reliable and works on real machines efficiently." (Friedrich Bauer, "Software Engineering", Information Processing, 1972)
"Throughout the software life cycle, there are many decision situations involving limited resources in which software engineering economics techniques provide useful assistance."(Barry Boehm, "Software Engineering Economics", 1984)
"Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer. Much of the complexity he must master is arbitrary complexity [… ] because they were designed by different people, rather than by God." (Fred Brooks, "No Silver Bullet", 1986)
"Software engineering, of course, presents itself as another worthy cause, but that is eyewash: if you carefully read its literature and analyse what its devotees actually do, you will discover that software engineering has accepted as its charter 'How to program if you cannot'." (Edsger W Dijkstra, "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science", 1988)
"One principle problem of educating software engineers is that they will not use a new method until they believe it works and, more importantly, that they will not believe the method will work until they see it for themselves." (Watts S Humphrey, "The Personal Software Process", 1997)
"Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering." (Bill Gates, "Bill Gates Speaks: Insight from the World's Greatest Entrepreneur", 1998)
"In all engineering disciplines nowadays, software engineering excluded, there exists an established engineering process to develop a system, which is accompanied by a number of suited modeling description techniques. Software engineering, being a rather new field, has not as yet established any clear methodical guidance or a fully standardized modeling notation." (Bernhard Rumpe, "Executable Modeling with UML: A Vision or a Nightmare", 2002)
"The entire history of software engineering is that of the rise in levels of abstraction." (Grady Booch, "The Limits of Software", 2003)
"Software engineering concerns methods and techniques to develop large software systems. The engineering metaphor is used to emphasize a systematic approach to develop systems that satisfy organizational requirements and constraints." (Hans van Vliet, "Software Engineering: Principles and Practice", 2007)
"The amateur software engineer is always in search of magic, some sensational method or tool whose application promises to render software development trivial. It is the mark of the professional software engineer to know that no such panacea exist." (Grady Booch et al, "Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications", 2007)
"A lot of research in software engineering strikes me as hopelessly naive in one of two ways. Most of it fails entirely to account for the social and belief aspects altogether. It looks at its object of inquiry as if it was entirely material and inert; as if 'software' was some kind of naturally occurring substance, the properties of which can be revealed in the equivalent of a test tube." (Laurent Bossavit, "The Leprechauns of Software Engineering", 2015)
"Design is the process of taking something that appears in the mind’s eye, modeling it in one or more of a number of ways, predicting how that thing will behave if it is made, and then making it, sometimes modifying the design as we make it. Design is what engineering is about. Furthermore, modeling is how engineering design is done. This includes mental models, mathematical models, computer models, plans and drawings, written language, and (sometimes) physical models." (William M Bulleit, "The Engineering Way of Thinking: The Idea", Structure [magazine], 2015)
"The fact that software engineering is not like other forms of engineering should really come as no surprise. Medicine is not like the law. Carpentry is not like baking. Software development is like one thing, and one thing only: software development. We need practices that make what we do more efficient, more verifiable, and easier to change. If we can do this, we can slash the short-term cost of building software, and all but eliminate the crippling long-term cost of maintaining it." (David S Bernstein, "Beyond Legacy Code", 2015)
"Over-engineering is a real disease of many engineers as they delight in design purity and ignore tradeoffs." (Alex Xu, "System Design Interview: An insider's guide", 2017)
"Good engineering is the difference between code running in eight minutes or eight hours. It affects real people in real ways. It's not a 'matter of opinion' any more than a bird taking flight is a 'matter of opinion'." (H W Kenton)
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