List of software engineering topics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This list complements the software engineering article, giving more details and examples.
For an alphabetical listing of topics, please see List of software engineering topics (alphabetical).
Influence on society
Software engineers affect society by creating applications. These applications produce value for users, and sometimes produce disasters.
Applications
Software engineers build applications that people use.
Applications influence software engineering by pressuring developers to solve problems in new ways. For example, consumer software emphasizes low cost, medical software emphasizes high quality, and Internet commerce software emphasizes rapid development.
- Business software
- Analytics
- Airline reservations
- Banking
- Commerce
- Compilers
- Communication
- Computer graphics
- Cryptography
- Databases, support almost every field
- Embedded systems Both software engineers and traditional engineers write software control systems for embedded products.
- Engineering All traditional engineering branches use software extensively. Engineers use spreadsheets, more than they ever used calculators. Engineers use custom software tools to design, analyze, and simulate their own projects, like bridges and power lines. These projects resemble software in many respects, because the work exists as electronic documents and goes through analysis, design, implementation, and testing phases. Software tools for engineers use the tenets of computer science; as well as the tenets of calculus, physics, and chemistry.
- File
- Finance
- Games
- Information systems, support almost every field
- LIS Management of laboratory data
- MIS Management of financial and personnel data
- Logistics
- Manufacturing
- Music
- Networks and Internet
- Office suites
- Operating systems
- Robotics
- Signal analysis
- Simulation, supports almost every field.
- Sciences
- Traffic Control
- Training
- Visualization, supports almost every field
- Voting
- World wide web
Disasters
Software has played a role in many high-profile disasters.
- Ariane 5 Flight 501
- Mars probes
- Denver International Airport
- TAURUS - UK share settlement system and dematerialised central share depository.
- Therac-25 - A radiation therapy machine responsible for six overdoses due to faulty software.
- Airbus A320 - The Airbus A320, while a highly safe and successful aircraft, was highly controversial in software engineering circles, being the first civilian Fly-by-wire aircraft. In the Airbus flight control systems, the computer has the final say on all decisions, meaning the safety of passengers depends upon the accuracy of the software specification, and the competence of the engineering teams producing the (multiple, independent) software stacks. Other than the crash of the original plane (in which a demonstration of stability outside the envelope went awry) whose cause is still not fully known, the sole crash which has been attributed to software was the Strasbourg A320 crash of Jan 21, 1992. In this crash which killed 87 people, the pilots had the flat panel display in the wrong mode. It is believed that the pilots had a console in flight path angle mode, instead of vertical speed entry. On entering a vertical speed, the aircraft descended into the mountains, without issuing any kind of warning. This accident shows a fundamental problem of software engineering: even if you implement the specification perfectly, an error in the specification (here, what constitutes an effective user interface), can still be lethal. It also shows another problem with computer controlled vehicles: there is vested interest by the manufacturers to attribute responsibility to the (often deceased) flight crew/drivers, rather than in the design of the vehicle.
Technologies and practices
Skilled software engineers use technologies and practices from a variety of fields to improve their productivity in creating software and to improve the quality of the delivered product.
Software engineering topics
Many technologies and practices are (mostly) unique to software engineering, though many of these are shared with computer science.
Programming paradigm, based on a programming language technology
Patterns, document many common programming and project management techniques
- Agile
- Heavyweight
- Process evaluation frameworks
A platform combines computer hardware and an operating system. As platforms become more powerful and less expensive, applications and tools become more widely available.
Other tools
Computer science topics
Skilled software engineers know a lot of computer science including what is possible and impossible, and what is easy and hard for software.
Mathematics topics
Discrete mathematics is a key foundation of software engineering.
Other
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