Who Needs Software Engineering?

The traditional distinction between software and hardware was that software was easily changeable and therefore "soft," whereas hardware was captured on a physical medium like a chip, was hard to change, and was therefore "hard." This traditional distinction seems to be breaking down today. Software delivered via the internet is clearly "soft" in the traditional sense, but software delivered via CD or DVD is hardly "soft" in the sense of being "easy to change." We now commonly see software being delivered on EPROMs; the Electronic Control Module that controls my car’s fuel injection is an example. I can take my car to my dealer to have the chip reprogrammed, so in some sense the program on the chip is soft, but is it software? Should the chip developers be using software engineering? Computer chip designers are now doing much of their chip development using software-engineering-like tools. Only at the last minute is the code committed to silicon. Do we really think that committing ...  more