Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
internal developments in information technology and their larger social
and historical context. It can help explain why, in an industry character-
ized by rapid change and innovation, the rhetoric of crisis has proven so
remarkably persistent.
Despite the persistence of the software crisis mentality, programming
continues to survive as an essentially craft-based occupation in the
midst of a predominantly engineering-oriented corporate environment.
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Although the rhetoric of software engineering has been generally adopted,
the substance of software engineering has not. Military and industrial
leaders continue to decry the lack of engineer standards in software
development. “More and more software will be behind schedule, over
budget, under powered, and of poor quality—and there's nothing we
can do about it,” complained an article in
Byte Magazine
in 1996. A
1998 study by the House Committee on Software Development and
Regulation called software a shoot-from-the-hip industry, noting a “dis-
tinct vacuum in the treatment of ethics in computer science.”
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Almost
thirty years after the fi rst NATO Conference on Software Engineering,
many programmers and project managers are still concluding that
“excellent developers, like excellent musicians and artists, are born, not
made.”
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