Software Information

This article is a condensation of the ideas of Robert L. Glass, in his book “In the Beginning: Recollections of Software Pioneers” program in the history of software.
Glass warns the reader that “The most common mistake is to assume that progress in the early days was slow and plodding and not so much what happened on the field.”
Glass shared an era of software into three periods:
Pioneer in the era (1955-1965)

* The most important development is that a new computer from almost every year or two, so that the existing obsolete. The software people have to rewrite their programs to these new machines.
* Developer is not the computer on the desk, and she had to go to the “engine room”.
* The work was approved for Time Machine or service personnel. The work of punch cards to enter the card machine and hoped that the results from the printer.
* The field is so new that the idea of control is absent. Predicting the completion of the project, it was almost impossible.
* Computer hardware was application. Science and business functions, the necessary machinery.
* The need for old programs are often tailored to the needs of new machines for high-languages like FORTRAN, COBOL and ALGOL developed.
* Equipment manufacturers have opted for free software systems, such as the hardware can not be sold without software. Some companies sell services to create software that companies that sell software, but software packages.
* The concept of re-blossomed. Because the software is free, the user organizations in the basket. The group of scientists from IBM, as a user of the Group shares offered catalogs of reusable components.
* Teacher Academy, nor the principles of computer science.
* Modular programs and data abstraction, used for programming.

Stabilization of an era (1965-1980)
* The whole system works in place, and was institutionalized in the program, not their own jobs, except for applications such as on-board computers. To manage the contract, has a huge bureaucracy around the computer center.
* The biggest problem with the bureaucracy that time, the time between submission and final offer. In the worst case, measured in days.
* Then came the IBM 360-m It marks the beginning of the stabilization time. This was the largest project to date. At the end of an era of rapid and cheap computers for every year or two. Software people, finally, time for new software, instead of rewriting old. Even combined 360 scientific and business applications on the same machine. It offers both binary and decimal arithmetic. With the 360, the distance between the scientific and commercial applications, people came to the event, and this has had an enormous impact in the field of sociology. Scientists tend to be programmers degrees higher than the view of programmers at the company, which is usually only in connection degrees. A scientific programmer said: “I have nothing against working with the developers of the economy, but I do not want my daughter marry you!”
* Great operating system, is still to come free with your computer, the majority of services running program.
* Job Control Language JCL, a new class of problems. The programmer must write a program to a new language to tell the computer and operating system to do. JCL has been less popular in the 360-m
* PL / I, approved by IBM to combine all of the programming language, one not.
* The demand for programmers than the proposal.
* The concept of time, with terminals in the workplace, which is applied directly to the queues in different types of beginning to emerge, with some resistance from traditionalists.
* The software has stabilized, the software company’s asset and its cost is too high.
* Stability will lead to the emergence of scientific computing in the late 60′s. However, the software engineering discipline, does not exist.
* Many “High Fashion” disciplines such as artificial intelligence was created. As these new concepts can not be converted into cash in favor of the reliability of the information, and began to sink.
* “Structured programming” explosion on the scene in the middle of this era.
* Monitoring standards of battle. Supplier, the rules have significant competitive advantages in accordance with the rules of its own technology.
* Even if the manufacturer is trying to speed up the process of production of software, its low prices to keep the software, and a few at a time.
* Most user applications to do at home.
* The developers must go to the “engine room”, not the computers on their desks.

In Micro Era (1980-current)
* Prices of computers dramatically ubiquitous computing possible. Now every developer can have a computer at his desk.
* Old JCL was created in accordance with user-friendly GUI.
* In the area still has its problems. As part of a hardware architecture that the programmer must know the instruction has not changed since the introduction of the IBM and the first chip from Intel. In most programming languages currently in use from 15 to 40 years. The fourth generation languages have never reached the dream of “programming without programmers” and the idea of reporting from the database. There is a growing buzz, but more and better research.

The history of software, Robert L. Glass