Software Engineering

This section brings together my research in software engineering, as it began to take shape in the second half of the 1970s and evolved throughout the 1980s, in a technological context marked by software fragility, the lack of standards and the need for a systematic approach to design. It also follows the way in which these ideas were later transferred into education, through the Software Engineering profile built at FILS.

For me, software engineering was never merely a collection of programming techniques, but an effort to understand and model the process through which a software product comes into being: from ideas and specifications to intermediate forms, design decisions and, ultimately, implementation.

Synthesis and reflection pages

• The History of Software Engineering
  A commented chronology of the field, from artisanal programming and the NATO Conference in Garmisch to Agile, DevOps, cloud, generative AI and the current transformation of the discipline.
• The Future of Software Engineering
  An essay-dialogue about the future of the field and of Software Engineering education, starting from the experience of the school built at FILS and the challenges brought by platforms, DevOps, cloud and generative AI.
• Agentic AI Architecture: The Return of Software Engineering
  A reflection on systems populated by intelligent agents, in which context becomes an adaptive state of the agent's universe, agents form digital ecosystems, and tools, memory, control and observability must be brought together within an integrated framework.

Institutional memory and education

• FILS: the return to Politehnica
  The memoir page about my return to Politehnica, the construction of the Software Engineering profile, the introduction of new disciplines, the formation of the teaching staff, the first specialized master's programme and the reflection on the future of this educational direction.

Main directions

• Program portability (1974–1979)
  Portable languages, intermediate code, macroprocessors (BCPL, INTCODE, STAGE-2, JANUS) and the first articles on portability as an engineering objective.
• Order in Chaos. Software Engineering and Architectures on Sand (1980–1989)
  Modeling the software design process, the abstract machine, the interform and the INTERFORM system as a computer-assisted development environment.
• Integrating Tools for Software Development (Prentice Hall, 1992)
  The book synthesizes my model of the software process, built on four families of entities: objects, activities, agents and tools. From this universe emerges the idea of an integrated and programmable environment for the development and evolution of programs.

Representative articles (selected)

• 2012 — Towards an Agent-Oriented Architecture of the Digital Healthcare Ecosystem
  A conceptual model for DHE and VHCR, together with an explicit transition toward implementation through agentification: agent classes, components and a multi-agent-system architecture.
• 2013 — Strengthening Context-Awareness of Virtual Species in Digital Ecosystems
  Digital healthcare ecosystems, avatars and virtual organisms, multifaceted context (clinical, environmental, emotional BDI and social profile), and a multi-agent architecture for gathering and integration.

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The texts in this section are organized as synthesis pages, accompanied, where necessary, by PDF documents or detailed pages. They reflect a stage in which my research interests gradually moved away from the isolated construction of programs and concentrated on the software process as an object of study in its own right. The link to the FILS page shows the continuation of these ideas at the educational and institutional level. The synthesis pages and the essay on the future are also signposted in the cross-cutting path Reflections.