Software Engineering: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone?

DeMarco Reflects on 40 Years of Software Engineering Evolution:  "On the 40th anniversary of NATO's "Conference on Software Engineering," where the discipline of software engineering was first proposed, Tom DeMarco paused to reflect on the discipline's evolution, including his role in influencing its initial direction toward metrics. The author of the much-quoted "You can’t control what you can’t measure" now wonders whether this orientation has distracted us from the real point of computing: "The more important goal is transformation, creating software that changes the world or that transforms a company or how it does business." His conclusion, under the title "Software Engineering: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone?" [pdf] appeared in the July/August edition of IEEE Software magazine."

See also: The Profession of IT is software engineering engineering in CACM, vol.52, no.3

Chuck Connell, Software Engineering is not equal do Computer Science: "Software engineering will never be a rigorous discipline with proven results, because it involves human activity. "