This book focuses on defining the achievements of software engineering in the past decades and showcasing visions for the future. It features a collection of articles by some of the most prominent researchers and technologists who have shaped the field: Barry Boehm, Manfred Broy, Patrick Cousot, Erich Gamma, Yuri Gurevich, Tony Hoare, Michael A. Jackson, Rustan Leino, David L. Parnas, Dieter Rombach, Joseph Sifakis, Niklaus Wirth, Pamela Zave, and Andreas Zeller. The contributed articles reflect the authors‘ individual views on what constitutes the most important issues facing software development. Both research- and technology-oriented contributions are included. The book provides at the same time a record of a symposium held at ETH Zurich on the occasion of Bertrand Meyer‘s 60th birthday.
In just a few decades, the development of quality software has evolved into one of the critical needs of our society. Meeting these needs would not be possible without the principles, best practices, and theoretical and technological foundations developed within the eld of software engineering. Despite many major achievements over the years, an even larger number of challenges have emerged, making it easy to predict a long and exciting future for this discipline.
The contributions in this book provide an insight into the nature of these challenges, and how they are rooted in past achievements. Written by some of the eld's most prominent researchers and technologists, the articles reect the views of the individual authors on whatever they feel is important for the future of software engineering. Hence a broad range of topics is treated, both from academic and industrial perspectives.
The origin of this book was the idea to organize an event for Bertrand Meyer's 60th birthday. The contributed articles are therefore also the record of a symposium entitled \The Future of Software Engineering (FOSE)", held at ETH Zurich on 22{23 November 2010 on the occasion. All of the speakers at the symposium have worked with Bertrand at various times, so that the themes found in their articles demonstrate the wide span of his research interests.
It is our pleasure to thank all speakers, who agreed without hesitation to contribute a talk and on many accounts even a full paper, despite their many other research activities and busy schedules in general. We also thank everybody who contributed to the organization of the symposium, in particular Claudia Gunthart and all members of the Chair of Software Engineering at ETH Zurich.
We hope the symposium and book will provide food for thought, stimulate discussions, and inspire research along the avenues highlighted in the articles.We also hope that the future of software engineering will see many of the authors' ideas realized, contributing to a prosperous growth of the eld.
