software engineering

English

Etymology

First attested in 1965 in service listings (in “systems software engineering”), partly popularized by American computer scientists Anthony Oettinger and Margaret Hamilton later in the decade. In a 1966 letter to the members of the Association for Computing Machinery, listed by the Oxford English Dictionary as the term’s first attestation, Oettinger wrote, “We must recognize ourselves […] as members of an engineering profession, be it hardware engineering or software engineering […]”.

Noun

software engineering (uncountable)

1. The subfield of engineering concerned with applying a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software.

Related terms

• software engineer

Translations

subfield of engineering concerned with the development, operation, and maintenance of software

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 軟件工程／软件工程 (ruǎnjiàn gōngchéng)

• Czech: softwarové inženýrství n
• Finnish: ohjelmistotuotanto
• French: génie logiciel (fr) m
• German: Softwaretechnik f
• Greek: μηχανική λογισμικού (el) f (michanikí logismikoú), τεχνολογία λογισμικού (el) f (technología logismikoú)
• Hungarian: szoftvertechnológia (hu)
• Icelandic: hugbúnaðarverkfræði f
• Indonesian: rekayasa perangkat lunak
• Irish: innealtóireacht bogearraí f
• Italian: ingegneria del software f
• Japanese: ソフトウェア工学 (ソフトウェアこうがく, sofutouea kougaku)
• Kurdish:

  Northern Kurdish: endezyariya nivîsbariyê f

• Malay: kejuruteraan perisian (ms)
• Portuguese: engenharia de software f
• Romanian: inginerie software f, ingineria programării f
• Thai: วิศวกรรมซอฟต์แวร์
• Turkish: yazılım mühendisliği

Further reading

• Pierre Bourque and Robert Dupuis, editors (2004 February 6), Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge - 2004 Version‎^[1], IEEE Computer Society, →ISBN, pages 1-1