There has been progress in SE though, the world is asking for more software and larger more complex systems to be written. The progress in software engineering

There has been progress in SE though, the world is asking for more software and larger more complex systems to be written. The progress in software engineering seems to be in finding good practices and giving them names, when they have names one can write papers about them where their usage in actual projects is analysed. Example: there was a time when object orientation had not been coined as a term. Now that we have it we can move to the next step and explore variations on it. We can teach it, we can make languages adapted for it. (I'm not holding up object orientation itself as an example of progress here (or the opposite), but the concept of giving a practice a name and exploring it.) It's a great advantage if one can talk about 'unit tests' and a new hired person knows about it. People were writing what qualified as unit tests before the name existed, but now that we have a name we can write books about it, discuss problems in doing it, etc. I'm sure bridge building and other engineering efforts have had much of the same development in their infancy. Clever individuals were doing successful things without thinking much about it they worked what they had, others needed to talk about it and books were written... and now we know arch bridges, suspension bridges.