Dear Grady,
I did read your classical article and book on Object Oriented Analisys and Design (OOAD) in 1997 and since I have researching on Software Engineering (SE), including SE history. Now, related to your lecture, I’m interesting in your opinion about the real history of SE related to the rivalry between IEEE-CS and ACM since SE invention, and its consequences as discipline.
My argument was developed in a short version on my paper First things first: If software engineering is the solution, then what is the problem? as following:
“In an approach based on the Science & Technology Studies is clear that SE was founded when the interests of the first huge customer of software, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and its contractors, could not defeat the interests of the ACM (the main professional association of that time) in an industry of software, academically strong, but DoD was looking for a silver bullet for its managerial crisis and to control to its huge software projects and to its contractors. So, the software crisis term was coined. In consequence, the First SE Conference was celebrated in Garmisch, in 1968, strangely enough, without the invitation to the ACM. After this, would was evident an intellectual and political hostility towards the ACM. The political intention to replace “computer sciences” with “software engineering” would was so evident. An antagonism arose between the ACM and those whom supported SE and created the IEEE-CS. Today, that historical disagreement has not gone away and it continues a subtle intention for “filing for divorce” between them. In any case, SE was invented in Garmisch, at least in a rhetorical sense as the technical and management discipline that would solve the software crisis. The silver bullet was discovered, finally.”
Q1: What is your opinion about this antagonistic history IEEE-CS vs ACM?
“The main consequence of this history of computing is that SE has not played the major role that it would have wanted. CS did not hesitate and now, more than fifty years after of its foundation, is widely recognized as a science and beyond, it has influenced those others. However, SE succumbed to the outside interests and now it navigates to the drift, without such progress. Now there is no longer reason to such rivalry. The SE did fail and the closest thing to a theory of software is: the SWEBoK supported by the IEEE-CS (made to the image and likeness of the PMBoK Guide), the models for management and organization for software contractors of the CMM-I by Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and recently, the SEMAT Initiative.”
Q2: What is your opinion on the consequences of this antagonism between IEEE-CS vs ACM?
Kind regards,
Jesús Zavala Ruiz
A long version of this argument and history is in my CS thesis Software Engineering: An Epistemological Discussion.