Continuing Prospects for an Engineering Discipline of Software

In her 1990 IEEE Software article "Prospects for an Engineering Discipline of Software" (Nov./Dec, pp. 15-24), Mary Shaw identified the key areas that the software development profession must address to become a true engineering discipline. That classic article made the magazine's 25th anniversary top picks list (Jan./Feb. 2009, pp. 9-11). Here, Mary reflects on the evolution of her thinking since the publication of "Prospects". The paper dealt with the topics of: programming progress; beyond programming; management of the software production; and progress toward an engineering discipline.