11. The first Software Crisis
In Europe alone there are about 10,000 installed computers — this number is increasing at a rate of anywhere from 25 per cent to 50 per cent per year. The quality of software provided for these computers will soon affect more than a quarter of a million analysts and programmers. (Gries & Fraser, 1968)
We haven’t just suddenly, as a society, become bad at making software. We’ve always been bad at software. We’ve always been bad at completing and shipping our software and computing projects.
It’s fitting that the first software project in history, Ada Lovelace’s and Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine was designed in the 19th century but wasn’t finished until 1991 (Si apre in una nuova finestra). Too expensive and over a century too late. The software industry began as it intended to carry on.
The early days of modern computing (as opposed to 19th-century computing) were almost as hectic. They improved delivery times over the Difference Engine as projects were completed in years instead of decades. But, as always, we were bad at making software.
One mitigating factor was that the early, post-war computers were practically custom-made to their purpose and only had the power to be able to tackle relatively simple problems. Simple problems meant simple software. As we know, simple code is the only code we can make reliably.
This didn’t last long.
Moore’s law was a more concrete reality back then. Computers steadily became more powerful, which led them to be applied to more complex problems.
This did not go well.
By 1968, this was a full-blown crisis:
Particularly alarming is the seemingly unavoidable fallibility of large software since a malfunction in an advanced hardware-software system can be a matter of life and death, not only for individuals but also for vehicles carrying hundreds of people and ultimately for nations as well. (Gries & Fraser, 1968)
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