Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
conference in 1969 was intended to have an explicitly practical focus:
the goal was to develop specifi c techniques of software engineering. As
with the Garmisch meeting, a deliberate and successful attempt was
made to attract a wide range of participants. The resulting conference,
however, bore little resemblance to its predecessor. Whereas the Garmisch
participants had coalesced around a shared sense of urgency, the Rome
conference was characterized by confl ict. According to the same observer
who had referred glowingly to the Garmisch conference as a “most
refreshing experience,” the discussions at the Rome meeting were
“sterile,” the various groups of attendees “never clicked,” and “most
participants” left feeling “an enormous sense of disillusionment.”
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A
prolonged debate about the establishment of an international software
engineering institute proved so acrimonious and divisive that it was
omitted from the conference proceedings: “All I remember is that it
ended up being a lot of time wasted, and no argument ever turned up
to make something happen—which is probably just as well.”
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Why was the Rome conference considered to be such a disappoint-
ment relative to Garmisch? Many of the same participants had attended
both meetings; there had been no signifi cant changes in terms of demo-
graphic makeup or organizational structure. Neither were there any
major new issues or technologies introduced or discussed. Many of the
Rome presentations covered material that had previously been addressed,
albeit at a less detailed and technical level, at Garmisch. And yet while
the Garmisch conference is widely considered to have marked a pivotal
moment in the history of software development—“a major cultural shift
in the perception of programming”—the Rome one seems to have been
deliberately forgotten.
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One obvious difference between the two events is that the earlier
conference had encouraged participants to focus their attention on a
commonly perceived but vaguely defi ned emergency, while the latter
forced them to deal with specifi c controversial issues. Software engineer-
ing had emerged as a compelling solution to the software crisis in part
because it was fl exible enough to appeal to a wide variety of computing
practitioners. The ambiguity of concepts such as professionalism, engi-
neering discipline, and effi ciency allowed competing interests to partici-
pate in a shared discourse that nevertheless enabled them to pursue vastly
different personal and professional agendas. Industry managers adopted
a defi nition of professionalism that provided for educational and certifi -
cation standards, a tightly disciplined workforce, and increased corpo-
rate loyalty. Computer manufacturers looked to engineering discipline
