Relevance for Software Engineering

In this chapter, we focus on two aspects of the Internet. The first relates to the end users ”the people who use the e-commerce online applications. In this sense, we close the circle of developers “clients “end users. Accordingly, while the inter-relation between developers and clients was discussed in Chapter 4, Software as a Product, in the first section of this chapter we explore possible connections between developers and end users by addressing cognitive and social aspects of e-commerce.

As is expected from such a rich topic as e-commerce, an interdisciplinary approach is taken in this chapter. Since it is impossible to review in this book all the relevant issues associated with e-commerce, we leave for the readers the learning of parts of the topics, by posing questions that may direct them how to further explore those directions they find interesting.

The second aspect looks at the Internet through one of its salient attributes ”the timeless nature of the Internet. It explores how different processes have been changed during the past decade in which the Internet entered our life. Clearly, this nature of the Internet is of high relevance for software engineers . First, it may influence their everyday work; second, it may influence the type of applications they are developing.