General Comparison between the Old-Established Software Engineering Paradigm and NSE (Nonlinear Software Engineering Paradigm)

摘要

This paper describes the major differences between the old-established software engineering paradigm and a new software engineering paradigm called NSE (Nonlinear software engineering paradigm based on complexity science) in detail. The essential difference between them is how to handle the relationship between the whole and its parts of a software system. The former adheres to the reductionism principle and superposition principle that the whole is the sum of its parts, so that nearly all software development tasks/activities are performed partially and locally, such as the implementation of requirement changes. The latter complies with the Holism Principle of complexity science, that a software product is a Complex Adaptive System having multiple interacting agents (components), of which the overall behavior and characteristics cannot be inferred simply from the behavior of its individual agents but emerge from the interaction of its parts, so that with NSE nearly all software development tasks/activities are performed globally and holistically to prevent defects in the entire software lifecycle.