1970 to 1979: Computers and Software Begin Creating Wealth - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 159

Middleware Software
Computers and software are symbiotic. The hardware is inert unless controlled by
special kinds of software termed operating systems that handle disk drives, com-
munication ports, and other physical attributes. The applications that customers
use and care about sit on top of the operating systems, but not directly on top.
In between the operating systems and the user applications is a layer called mid-
dleware that sends requests from applications to the operating system, distributed
computing, web request processing, and other services. The exact nature of mid-
dleware is somewhat ambiguous.
Some specific examples of middleware include game engines that help game
developers interface with graphic chipsets, libraries of services that handle multi-
media, and the multimedia home platform within smart television sets.
Military Software
Starting with SAGE in the 1950s, the Department of Defense and the military ser-
vices have been leaders in usage of both computers and software. In fact, even
before digital computers, the military had a long and successful history with ana-
log computers. These were used for bombsights, torpedo targeting, shipboard gun
controls, anti-aircraft targeting, and numerous other purposes. In fact, analog com-
puters were the dominant military computing engines through the end of the Viet-
nam War. Digital computers are now major operating components of all sophistic-
ated weapons systems, including combat aircraft, guided missiles, warships, battle
tanks, and essentially any complex device.
Of course, weapons systems are not the only kinds of software used by the uni-
formed services. Hundreds of other kinds of applications are needed for logistics,
planning, communications, medical records, personnel records, payrolls, purchas-
ing, and normal kinds of business functions. The U.S. Department of Defense is
currently the world's largest owner of software, which is starting to age and have
significant maintenance costs.
Some of the largest software systems in history have been built by the U.S. De-
partment of Defense and the uniformed services. One of these was the World-Wide
Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS), which reportedly topped
300,000 function points or more than 21,000,000 lines of code.
In recent years, the military services have created cyberwarfare units for pro-
tecting U.S. cyberassets and for coming up with possible future offensives against
enemy cyberassets in the event of a physical war.