Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Almost every application being designed in the 1960s was new, unique, and
probably had never been done before. In today's world, almost 90% of new ap-
plications are replacements for aging legacy software packages.
In the early 1960s, there were only a handful of legacy applications written for
the earlier IBM 650 and IBM 701 computers. Even these were not very old and
were being reprogrammed merely because they did not run on newer computers
such as the IBM 1401 and IBM 1410.
Eventually, specialists such as systems analysts and business analysts would
handle most of the interactions with clients, but in the very early days the program-
mers not only had to handle pure coding but also had to deal with requirements,
architecture, design, coding, debugging, and testing. Some programmers also did
postrelease maintenance because separate change teams and maintenance groups
were still in the future. Even customer support and answering phone calls from
users were chores that programmers tackled in the 1960s.
Today, more than 115 different occupation groups are associated with large
software organizations. In the early 1960s, there was very little differentiation and
we were all generalists who did whatever was needed.
Emergence of the Software Engineer
The phrase “software engineering” had not become popular then nor was it espe-
cially appropriate given the ad hoc development methods then in use. Edsger Dijk-
stra would not publish his famous paper “Notes on Structured Programming” until
1965.
We called ourselves “computer programmers,” not software engineers. We had
to use “computer” as well as “programmer” to avoid confusion with radio and tele-
vision programmers. (I can recall friends of my parents asking what radio station I
worked for when they learned I was a programmer.)
The term “software” was so new to the general public that some thought it re-
ferred to the little Styrofoam peanuts that were used for packing around delicate
electronic components.
Although “software” had been defined in 1958, the first notable use of the
phrase “software engineering” did not occur until a NATO conference in
Garmisch, Germany, on October 7 to 11, 1968. The conference title was “Software
Engineering” and the conference chairman was Dr. F. L. Bauer.
More significantly, the conference notes were edited by Peter Naur and Brian
Randall and when they were published in January 1969, the urgency of moving
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