The term paradigm shift may be a bit overused these days; nevertheless, the kernel-based Essence approach to software engineering can quite reasonably be considered to be such a shift. It truly represents a profound change of viewpoint for the software-engineering community. In this paper, Ivar Jacobon and Ed Seidewitz explore what happened to to the promise of rigorous, disciplined, professional practices for software development, like those observed in other engineering disciplines and explain how the Essence standard is the answer.