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History of software engineering
The history of software engineering begins around the 1960s. Writing software has evolved into a profession concerned with how best to maximize the quality of software and of how to create it. Quality can refer to how maintainable software is, to its stability, speed, usability, testability, readability, size, cost, security, and number of flaws or "bugs", as well as to less measurable qualities like elegance, conciseness, and customer satisfaction, among many other attributes. How best to create high quality software is a separate and controversial problem covering software design principles, so-called "best practices" for writing code, as well as broader management issues such as optimal team size, process, how best to deliver software on time and as quickly as possible, work-place "culture", hiring practices, and so forth. All this falls under the broad rubric of software engineering.
The evolution of software engineering is notable in a number of areas:
Early usages for the term software engineering include a 1965 letter from ACM president Anthony Oettinger, lectures by Douglas T. Ross at MIT in the 1950s. Margaret H. Hamilton is the person who came up with the idea of naming the discipline, software engineering, as a way of giving it legitimacy during the development of the Apollo Guidance Computer.
I fought to bring the software legitimacy so that it—and those building it—would be given its due respect and thus I began to use the term 'software engineering' to distinguish it from hardware and other kinds of engineering, yet treat each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process. When I first started using this phrase, it was considered to be quite amusing. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. Software eventually and necessarily gained the same respect as any other discipline
— Margaret Hamilton, 2014 interview with El País
The NATO Science Committee sponsored two conferences on software engineering in 1968 (Garmisch, Germany) and 1969, which gave the field its initial boost. Many believe these conferences marked the official start of the profession of software engineering.
Software engineering was spurred by the so-called software crisis of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, which identified many of the problems of software development. Many projects ran over budget and schedule. Some projects caused property damage. Through negligence in publishing software with critical bugs, some lost their lives due to software failures. One of the most striking examples of harm through software bugs was the Therac-25 race condition bug. The bug caused a radiation therapy machine to administer overdoses of radiation in cases where low doses should have been used. The software crisis was originally defined in terms of productivity, but evolved to emphasize quality. Some used the term software crisis to refer to their inability to hire enough qualified programmers.[citation needed] During this time, Silicon Valley cemented itself as the best location for software engineers to work.
Peter G. Neumann has kept a contemporary list of software problems and disasters. The software crisis has been fading from view, because it is psychologically extremely difficult to remain in crisis mode for a protracted period (more than 20 years). Nevertheless, software – especially real-time embedded software – remains risky and is pervasive, and it is crucial not to give in to complacency. Over the last 10–15 years Michael A. Jackson has written extensively about the nature of software engineering, has identified the main source of its difficulties as lack of specialization, and has suggested that his problem frames provide the basis for a "normal practice" of software engineering, a prerequisite if software engineering is to become an engineering science.
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History of software engineering
The history of software engineering begins around the 1960s. Writing software has evolved into a profession concerned with how best to maximize the quality of software and of how to create it. Quality can refer to how maintainable software is, to its stability, speed, usability, testability, readability, size, cost, security, and number of flaws or "bugs", as well as to less measurable qualities like elegance, conciseness, and customer satisfaction, among many other attributes. How best to create high quality software is a separate and controversial problem covering software design principles, so-called "best practices" for writing code, as well as broader management issues such as optimal team size, process, how best to deliver software on time and as quickly as possible, work-place "culture", hiring practices, and so forth. All this falls under the broad rubric of software engineering.
The evolution of software engineering is notable in a number of areas:
Early usages for the term software engineering include a 1965 letter from ACM president Anthony Oettinger, lectures by Douglas T. Ross at MIT in the 1950s. Margaret H. Hamilton is the person who came up with the idea of naming the discipline, software engineering, as a way of giving it legitimacy during the development of the Apollo Guidance Computer.
I fought to bring the software legitimacy so that it—and those building it—would be given its due respect and thus I began to use the term 'software engineering' to distinguish it from hardware and other kinds of engineering, yet treat each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process. When I first started using this phrase, it was considered to be quite amusing. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. Software eventually and necessarily gained the same respect as any other discipline
— Margaret Hamilton, 2014 interview with El País
The NATO Science Committee sponsored two conferences on software engineering in 1968 (Garmisch, Germany) and 1969, which gave the field its initial boost. Many believe these conferences marked the official start of the profession of software engineering.
Software engineering was spurred by the so-called software crisis of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, which identified many of the problems of software development. Many projects ran over budget and schedule. Some projects caused property damage. Through negligence in publishing software with critical bugs, some lost their lives due to software failures. One of the most striking examples of harm through software bugs was the Therac-25 race condition bug. The bug caused a radiation therapy machine to administer overdoses of radiation in cases where low doses should have been used. The software crisis was originally defined in terms of productivity, but evolved to emphasize quality. Some used the term software crisis to refer to their inability to hire enough qualified programmers.[citation needed] During this time, Silicon Valley cemented itself as the best location for software engineers to work.
Peter G. Neumann has kept a contemporary list of software problems and disasters. The software crisis has been fading from view, because it is psychologically extremely difficult to remain in crisis mode for a protracted period (more than 20 years). Nevertheless, software – especially real-time embedded software – remains risky and is pervasive, and it is crucial not to give in to complacency. Over the last 10–15 years Michael A. Jackson has written extensively about the nature of software engineering, has identified the main source of its difficulties as lack of specialization, and has suggested that his problem frames provide the basis for a "normal practice" of software engineering, a prerequisite if software engineering is to become an engineering science.