The opening remarks for Real Software Engineering, Living Social developer Glenn Vanderburg's keynote presentation at QCon 2012 in San Francisco, include this:
The people who started the software engineering field and movement, from the very beginning, misunderstood two very important things: software and engineering. And as a result, the field went off in the wrong direction from the very start, and legitimized certain ways of doing things and certain paths of research that really have not been very fruitful.
Vanderburg's presentation is fascinating, often funny, and well worth watching, especially in light of how cloud computing and other technological shifts are redefining IT roles.