On this relative time scale, worldwide, publications and lectures on computer science were positioned in the year 1993. How it all started is known only to a few people. One of them is Prof. Dr. F.L.Bauer:
"There is so much tinkering with software ... what we need is software engineering" are the words he used 1967 in a meeting of the NATO Science Committees in Brussels, when the evaluation of the still young field of software development was on the agenda.

Bauer was then commissioned to organize a working conference with the theme "Software-Engineering". This meeting, now considered a historic milestone, was held October 7-10, 1968 in Garmisch, Bavaria. Without exaggeration,it can be said that this event and the documents and papers it produced led to a worldwide consciousness of the problem. This had the consequence that from different sides - research, education, computer industry, and applications - intensified efforts were made to base the software development process on better theoretical grounds, to put more emphasis on systematic procedures and adapted approaches, and to introduce computer-based tools. Chairs and curricula were created, specialist groups and working groups, books and periodicals devoted exclusively to software engineering were introduced. Since then, this field has become so wide that it fans out into subdomains.
Commemorating the meeting held 25 years ago, the 4th ESEC (European Software Engineering Conference) took place in Garmisch, September 13-17, 1993. Apart from a session devoted to the beginning of the subject (including lectures given by F.L.Bauer and J.Buxton) the main theme was the present status. The conference was chaired by Prof. Dr. M.Paul, the program committee was under Prof.I.Sommerville, Lancaster. The procedures have been published: Sommerville, I.; Paul, M.: Software Engineering - ESEC '93. Springer, Heidelberg, 1993 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science 717).

Albert Endres