A software modeling capability proxy metric

Software engineering-the art of building software-has become a crucial skill in a global economy increasingly affected by IT. This paper tries to indicate where a specific advanced software engineering activity takes place, and how different countries compare. We propose a proxy metric for the activity, and analyze the corresponding data set by location and economic performance. Main findings: Europe does more advanced software engineering than the Americas; Northern and Eastern European countries are hotspots; the US is 41st in activity per gross domestic product (GDP), while India is 10th; Belgium and Switzerland have a high dispersion of their activity over their cities. The results are subject to the validity of the proxy measure used. Additional tools will be analyzed to provide a comprehensive software engineering capability map.