Jim Logajan wrote:
Matt Whiting wrote:
Don Tuite wrote:
On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:33:28 -0600, "Jon Woellhaf"
wrote:

Matt Whiting asked ... "What are the software equivalent of Maxwell's
equations?"

Knuth
A stretch. "GOTO Seen Harmful"? K&R? I don' think that dog's gonna
hunt. You've gotta get down to Shannon, which I don't think answers
the question wrt programming.

If Swain had a contrary opinion, I'd listen to it.

Don
K&R isn't even close. Knuth is getting closer. I personally think that
Nicklaus Wirth has come the closest to software engineering, but even he
is more of a computer scientist than an engineer and much the same holds
for Dijkstra.

Edgar Codd based his relational database model on predicate logic and set
theory. I'd call it the rough equivalent of Maxwell's equations in the
database world. Databases are pretty fundamental to a lot of applications,
so I don't think it is that much of a stretch.

Yes, I would tend to agree that the designer of the relational database
was engineering software or at least coming very close. However, I
disagree that the folks that use relational database and design
applications for them are performing engineering.

Unfortunately, what is called software engineering is seldom such. I'm
sure there are a handful of people in the world, but not many compared
to the more traditional engineering disciplines.

Matt