For 12 years the author of Rapid Development, the Software Project Survival Guide, and the best-selling Code Complete has been one of the most influential voices in software-development methodology and the profession of software engineering. In this interview, he explains the important distinction between software engineers and computer scientists. (Did you know the former are paid on average $10,000 more per year?)

Steve has given IT managers a variety of software-development lifycycle models including one he calls "evolutionary prototyping" which is at the heart of eXtreme Programming, and you'll be interested to hear what he thinks of XP. We also discussed why software seems to be so much less reliable than the hardware on which it runs, and got a preview of the second edition of Code Complete, due out in June 2004.