Software Engineering
2009–10

Principal lecturer: Prof Ross Anderson
Taken by: Part IB

Syllabus

Here are the lecture notes; printed copies will be distributed at the first lecture. The second week's lectures will be on October 12 and 13 rather than 13 and 15; they will still be at 1100. The lecture on the 13th will be a guest lecture by Robert Brady of Brady plc.

Here is Fred Brooks' article No Silver Bullet; the web page on NHS IT mentioned in the first lecture; the material on the London Ambulance System disaster; Nancy Leveson's latest book draft; and the paper by Curtis, Krasner and Iscoe discussed in the last lecture. Chapters 22 and 23 of my Security Engineering textbook were inspired by this course and may be of interest.

Past exam questions are here and here.

Further reading: Fred Brooks' book (mentioned in the syllabus) is available in a 1995 Anniversary Edition with 120 pages of new material. In addition, Dr Brady recommends Pascal Zachary's Show-stopper. And here's a piece I recorded on Y2K.

(Jan 2010): here's an update on Therac – an article from the New York Times on recent fatalities caused by poor radiology systems and software.