Software development: an outsider´s view

Comparing software with other disciplines and industries can help resolve the perennial debate between those who advocate an engineering approach to development and those who advocate a craft-based approach. Our ultimate goal should be to simply and directly raise the profile of software generally, respecting and making explicit its unique structures and important role in society, and creating training opportunities, research projects, and tools to support it. Such efforts move software not only beyond current methodology debates but also closer and more understandably to the world outside looking in