Software Climate Change and its Disruptive Weather: A Potential Shift from “Software Engineering” to Vibrant/Dynamic Softology

Abstract

Like natural climate change on the planet earth, the climate in software development environments is also changing (fast). Like the natural weather, the software environment is also disruptive. As the climate experts alert and suggest taking necessary measures to overcome certain challenges to make this earth a safer and comfortable living place, likewise this article also alerts the relevant stakeholders of software craftsmanship about the dynamic challenges that traditional Software Engineering (SE) with purely “Engineering mind-set” is not capable to respond. Hence, some new thoughts to overcome such challenges are shared. Fundamentally, based on the historical evidences, this article presents the authors’ observation about continuous shift from traditional “Engineering-based” software development approaches to disruptive approaches – “Vibrant Softology”. The authors see the cause of this shift as disruptive transformational force, which is so powerful that it is uncontrollably diminishing the “Engineering-based” approach from software development environments. The authors align it with climate change analogy. Based on this analogy, the authors feel the need to theoretically re-coin the notion of SE to some new term; perhaps Vibrant/Dynamic Softology (VS or DS). Hence, the authors suggest “a new (disruptive and dynamic) way of thinking is required to develop software”. It is worth mentioning that the purpose of article and this new theory is not to disparage the notion of software engineering altogether, rather the aim is to highlight the importance of transformation from SE to its next level (perhaps VS/DS) due to the emerging needs in the software craftsmanship environment.