Challenges of Educating the Next Generation of Software Engineers

摘要

There is an ever-increasing demand for computers and software in nearly all areas of society. Projections of this demand, coupled with pessimistic projections of the growth of productivity of software engineers, indicate that by early in the next century every man, woman, and child in the United States will have to be a software engineer. The telephone company was faced with similar projections in the 1920s for operators, but the development of new technology allowed all users of telephones to perform nearly all the duties of operators. Since the technology to make software engineers of all users of computers is unlikely to be available in the foreseeable future, we must increase the number of software engineers and increase the productivity of current software engineers. Improving the productivity of software engineers requires new ways of thinking and reasoning about software and better methods of producing it. To gain intellectual control over the software production process and become more productive and efficient, we aspire toward making the production of software less labor intensive and more technology intensive. The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) expects that this shift will be attained through automation based on sound models and principles.