History of software engineering When the first digital computersappeared in the early 1940s, [ 9 ]the instructions to make them operate were wired into the machine. Practitioners quickly realized that this design was not flexible and came up with the"stored program architecture" or von Neumann architecture. Thus the division between "hardware" and "software" began with abstractionbeing used to deal with the complexity of computing. Programming languagesstarted to appear in the 1950s and this was also another major step in abstraction. Major languages suchas Fortran, ALGOL, and COBOLwere released in the late 1950s todeal with scientific, algorithmic, and business problems respectively. E.W. Dijkstrawrote his seminal paper, "Go To Statement Considered Harmful", [ 10 ]in 1968 and David Parnasintroduced the key concept of modularityand information hidingin 1972 [ 11 ]to help programmers deal with the ever increasing complexity of software systems. A software system for managing the hardware called an operating systemwas also introduced, most notably by Unixin 1969. In 1967, the Simulalanguage introduced the object- oriented programmingparadigm. These advances in softwarewere met with more advances in computer hardware. In the mid-1970s, the microcomputerwas introduced, making it economical for hobbyists to obtain a computerand write softwarefor it. This in turn led to the now famous Personal Computer(PC). The Software Development Life Cycleor SDLC was also starting to appear as a consensus for centralized construction of software in the mid-1980s. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the introduction of several new Simula-inspired object-oriented programming languages, including Smalltalk, Objective-C, and C++. Open-sourcesoftware started to appear in the early 90s in the form of Linuxand other software introducing the "bazaar" or decentralized style of constructingsoftware. [ 12 ]Then the World Wide Weband the popularization of the Internethit in the mid 90s, changing the engineering of software once again. Distributed systemsgained sway as a way to design systems, and the Javaprogramming language was introduced with its own virtual machineas another step in abstraction. Programmerscollaborated and wrote the Agile Manifesto, which favored more lightweight processes to create cheaper and timelier software. The current definition ofsoftwareengineeringis still being debated by practitioners today as they struggle to come up with ways to produce software that is"cheaper, better, faster". Cost reductionhas been a primary focus of the IT industry since the 1990s. Total cost of ownershiprepresents the costs of more thanjust acquisition. It includes things like productivity impediments, upkeep efforts, and resources needed to support infrastructure.
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 14:40:08 +0000
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