Fifty Years of Software Engineering - or - The View from Garmisch
This is an incremental historical perspective for software engineering researchers and practitioners, emphasizing ongoing challenges in large-scale bespoke software development.
The paper reflects on the history of software engineering since the 1968-69 NATO conferences, noting the success of the off-the-shelf package industry but highlighting that large bespoke software projects still face problems reminiscent of the original 'software crisis'.
On several earlier anniversaries of the 1968-69 NATO Software Engineering conferences I have acceded to requests to provide some reminiscences. I repeat some extracts from these reminiscences here, as a backdrop to brief comments on subsequent developments, and in particular on the distinctions between developing off-the-shelf package software and large one-off bespoke software systems. The software package industry had yet to come into existence in 1968-69, but has proved very successful. But some large software projects in the latter bespoke category still suffer from problems that are all too reminiscent of those that, in 1968, gave rise to discussion of a "software crisis".