Software engineering is a constantly evolving discipline that combines computer science and strategic problem solving with engineering principles, technological advancements and programming languages to create new software that solves all kinds of challenges for businesses and users. Software engineers are responsible for creating and maintaining code for programs that exist throughout an organization and may use programming languages like C++, Java, Python or many others to do so. Additionally, two common methods used for software development, Agile and Waterfall, provide a workflow for consistently producing new products.
What Are 3 Types of Software Engineering?
Most software engineering tasks can be broken into three categories: operational software engineering, transitional software engineering and software engineering maintenance.
Though a software engineer is often responsible for managing multiple projects at a given time, software engineering does not just include the creation of the software’s code. In fact, all parts of the software development life cycle, from budgeting to analysis, design, development, testing, integration, maintenance and retirement are considered a part of software engineering. These related tasks can often fall into three separate buckets depending on the needs of the project: operational software engineering, transitional software engineering and software engineering maintenance.
Software Engineering Types
- Operational software engineering involves all tasks related to how the software will interact with a system, including tasks and decisions made on its budget, how it will work for teams and customers, its functionality within the system and any risks it may pose.
- Transitional software engineering involves tasks related to the software’s flexibility and scalability when it’s shifted out of its initial environment.
- Software engineering maintenance involves tasks related to improving and debugging existing software to account for changes in environment, emerging technologies or vulnerabilities and bugs that may have been neglected during a previous development cycle. Eventually, maintenance will be phased out and retirement will be initiated.
Are Software Engineering and Computer Science the Same Thing?
Software engineering focuses on practical solutions in software whereas computer science seeks to solve theoretical issues.
Computer science is more abstract than software engineering, dealing with topics like how data is processed, database organization, artificial intelligence, the security of networks and more. Computer scientists explore how computers work through the study of algorithms and the computations that drive processes to manipulate data.
Software engineering combines principles from programming and engineering to apply concepts discovered by computer scientists to software design. Software engineers must ensure that existing computer hardware can capably handle the software they design and remedy the challenges they set out to solve.
