Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#

Appendix B. What Is Software?

I can still remember where I was when I had the insight that eventually led to the following article. In the summer of 1986 I was working a temporary consulting assignment at the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in California. While there, I took the opportunity to attend a panel discussion on Ada. At one point, someone in the audience asked the typical question “Are software developers engineers?” I don’t remember the actual answer, but I do recall that it didn’t really seem to address the question. So I sat back and started thinking about how I would answer such a question. I am not sure how, but something in the ensuing discussion caused me to recall an article I had read in Datamation magazine almost 10 years ...