Software engineering is collaboration of programmers over time

Software engineering is what happens to programming when you add time and other programmers.

This is a great way to distinguish software engineering from just coding. Nothing wrong with "just coding", but if you write code that will be changed a lot by another people (or future you) during a long period of time... that's a whole different story.

Peter Bourgon also coined similar term Industrial programming in his article:

... I’m speaking today about programming in an industrial context. By that I mean

in a startup or corporate environment;

within a team where engineers come and go;

on code that outlives any single engineer; and

serving highly mutable business requirements.

Software engineering is collaboration of programmers over time

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