Re: Modern software engineering

From: [at]} <danforth{>
Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2004 23:20:59 -0500

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Why software still stinks
Programming must change -- but how? At a reunion of coding pioneers,
answers abound.

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By Scott Rosenberg

March 19, 2004 |

In some quarters today, it's still a controversial proposition to argue
that computer programming is an art as well as a science. But 20 years
ago, when Microsoft Press editor Susan Lammers assembled a collection of
interviews with software pioneers into a book titled "Programmers at
Work," the idea was downright outlandish. Programming Programming had
long been viewed as the domain of corporate engineers and university
computer scientists. But in the first flush of the personal computer
era, the role of software innovator began to evolve into something more
like the grand American tradition of the basement inventor -- with a
dollop of the huckster on top and, underneath, a deep foundation of
idealism.

It made sense that the people writing the most important code for the
new desktop machines were ragged individualists with eccentric streaks.
At a panel on Tuesday (sponsored by the SDWest conference and Dr. Dobb's
Journal) that celebrated Lammers' book, seven of the 19 original
subjects of "Programmers at Work" lined up on stage to talk about what's
changed in software over the past two decades -- and demonstrate that
they have lost none of their cantankerous edge.
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Received on Sun Mar 21 2004 - 05:20:59 UTC