3 ms·
My SE class last semester also said the waterfall model was a fairly good choice, although it "might not work especially well for projects with rapidly changing
by harpastum 17y ago
My SE class last semester also said the waterfall model was a fairly good choice, although it "might not work especially well for projects with rapidly changing specifications."
What they didn't say is that describes virtually every project.
- derefr 17y agoI'd say they're right to teach it as such, though. Software Engineering is about nuclear reactor software, traffic flow control software, car injection system firmware, weather prediction grid software, lunar rover software, and, just maybe (but this is at the borderline), ERP software. Meanwhile, web applications (that aren't Google-search scale projects) don't require any software "engineering"—they're simply designed and then crafted, more like a clay pot than a bridge. They're iterated like a play is rewritten slightly after each performance, based on audience approval and obvious errors, not based on any accepted theorem or body of knowledge that says that the given practice is wrong. A corollary of that statement is that Software Engineering has no use for most of us here at HN :)