Chapter 8: The History of Software Engineering

Introduction

This chapter presents the history of software engineering. It seems that this history is a combination of three evolutionary processes that occurred in parallel: the history of computers, the history of programming languages, and the history of software engineering methods .

Among the many interesting observations that can be discussed with respect to these historical processes, we emphasize three aspects. The first is that although the history of these areas is short (about half of a century), it went through so many events that each of these events influenced the future in a unique way. The second is that the three types of histories are intertwined and none can be isolated. The third is that human aspects have a significant role in these historical processes. That is, we cannot describe these processes without examining how people behaved and reacted to what happened around them. Thus, this chapter is presented like a story, with heroes, their behaviors, and details that make the stories vivid .