The difference between computer science, computer engineering, software engineering

[Shaddix]

I have to write a one-pager about the difference between computer science, computer engineering and software engineering for school.

I would like to share my first draft with you guys to see what you guys think about it. We haven't really gone into dept on the topic so I want to make sure the things I wrote aren't complete bull****. As it's only a first draft there may be some stupid language errors in it, so don't shoot me for that.

Computer science, computer engineering, software engineering, is there a difference?
For those who work in the sector the difference between computer science, computer engineering and software engineering can be quite clear. But for a lot of outsiders the line between those therms can be rather vague. Here is an attempt to show that there is a significant difference between those 3 big topics in IT.

The first difference between the three terms is the 2nd word. You have “science” and “engineering”. According to dictionary.com (a good online free English dictionary) science is:

“Knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.”

When looking up engineering you get the following definition:

“The art or science of making practical application of the knowledge of pure sciences.”

This is the first major difference, science studies existing items and facts where as engineering is being used to create new items or improve existing ones. More concrete this means that computer science studies existing software and hardware while computer engineering and software engineering develop hard and software.

That's all good, but now what is the difference between those two types of engineering? Like the name says software engineering handles the engineering of software. Computer engineering is more hardware focused, it designs computers and computer systems.

Both types of engineering overlap each other every once and a while. When you write a program for a company to maintain their stocks you will be doing software engineering to design the program itself. But the company will want that the program is available from multiple computers, for example the computer of the warehouse manager his computer and the computers of the sales department. This is where a computer engineer comes in the story. His job is to design a network including a server and the necessary connections.

This also works the other way around, When a computer engineer has designed a new system he may need some software engineering to make appropriate software to run the system.

We can conclude that computer science covers the theoretically aspect of computers and their software. Whereas computer engineering and software engineering help making new systems and software and improve or current. However computer engineering and software engineering use the theory acquired by computer scientists.

[CatchMeTux]

software engineering - most likely a software developer, programmer... they just want to call it in a very cool way

[stevie754]

Very good, clear and explains the differences very well.