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Unit 1: Introduction to Software Engineering

Operating procedures consist of instructions to setup and use the software system instructions Notes
on how to react to system failure. List of operating procedure manuals/documents is given in
Figure 1.3.

Figure 1.3: List of Operating Procedures Manuals

System overview
User manuals Beginner's guide tutorial

Reference guide

Operating procedures
Installation guide

Operational manuals

System administration guide
1.3 Evolution of an Art to an Engineering Discipline

Software engineering main beliefs have evolved over the past fifty years with contributions from
frequent researchers and software professionals. The early programmers used an investigative
programming style. In an investigative programming style, every programmer himself evolves
his own software development techniques exclusively guided by his perception, experience,
whims, and fancies. The investigative style of writing programs is also the one that is usually
adopted by all students who do not have experience to software engineering we can believe the
investigative program development style as an art-since, art is mostly guided by perception.
There are many stories about programmers in the past who were like proficient artists and could
write good programs based on some esoteric. In modern software industry, programmers rarely
make use of such an esoteric knowledge. If we analyze the evolution of software development
style over the past fifty we would see that it has changed from an esoteric art form to craft
form, and has emerged as an engineering discipline. As a matter of fact, this growth pattern is
not different from that of any other engineering discipline. Irrespective of the area, evolution of
technology has followed strikingly similar patterns. A schematic representation of this technology
development pattern is shown in Figure 1.4.

Figure 1.4: Technology Development with Time

Engineering

Unorganized
use of past
experience
Craft

Esoteric use of past
Art experience

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