No the waterfall method was a misquote by a non-tech reading a report on iterative, software development. The misappropriation took a life of it's own for contr

No the waterfall method was a misquote by a non-tech reading a report on iterative, software development. The misappropriation took a life of it's own for control-freak managers. Anyone wanting an example of where sensible people went with software engineering can look at Cleanroom from the 80's: http://infohost.nmt.edu/~al/cseet-paper.html http://infohost.nmt.edu/~al/cseet-paper.html The results speak for themselves. A modern approach is Altran/Praxis Correct by Construction method getting nearly zero-defect software. Some provably correct in SPARK. http://www.anthonyhall.org/c_by_c_secure_system.pdf http://www.anthonyhall.org/c_by_c_secure_system.pdf Today's work can add symbolic analysis (eg KLEE), assertion-driven test generation, languages like Haskell, certified compilers, and so on. What you're seeing in mainstream isn't software engineering. It exists, though, in s niche by academics and industry.