COMPARISON OF ELECTRICAL-ENGINEERING OF HEAVISIDES TIMES AND SOFTWAREENGINEERING OF OUR TIMES

In previous centuries, several technical fields that are now engineeri ng disciplines exhibited problems analogous to those frequently observ ed in software development today. This paper presents selected example s of experiences from some of those fields, especially electrical tele graphy and telephony during the second half of the 19th and the early 20th centuries, and compares them with difficulties, major mistakes, a nd so on arising in software development today. It is the thesis of th is paper that software development today is in a pre-engineering phase analogous in many respects to the pre-engineering phases of the now t raditional engineering disciplines. From observations regarding simila rities between experiences in those fields in the past and software de velopment today, questions are raised regarding lessons software devel opers might learn from those earlier experiences of others-in particul ar, from the solutions they found to their problems. Some answers are suggested.