Software has become an indispensable part of most products and services. As a result the need to “engineer software” professionally with high quality at low cost has become important to all branches of industry. The supporting scientific discipline called “software engineering”, on the other hand, has matured very slowly, and has only just now arrived at the verge of making a real contribution to truly professionalizing the “engineering of software”. This presentation reviews the historic evolution of both the profession of “engineering software” as well as the scientific discipline of “software engineering”, points out their symbiotic relationship, and closes with an outlook into a visionary future full of challenges for practitioners, researchers and teachers.