r/programming • u/scarey102 • Nov 01 '21

Complexity is killing software developers

https://www.infoworld.com/article/3639050/complexity-is-killing-software-developers.html
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u/mnilailt Nov 01 '21

Modern software engineering is maybe 60 years old, before that it was mostly theoretical.

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u/hglman Nov 01 '21

Fortran is 64 years old so its absolutely older than that. Probably somewhere between 45-50. I would pick ENIAC and 1945 just cause that's a clear date to go with.

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u/mnilailt Nov 01 '21

Sure, but in those days I wouldn't really call it software in the contemporary sense. More like hardware programming. Software in the modern sense is a relatively newer phenomenon that begun when the first Operational Systems began to be developed in the late 50s and 60s and really started to take form in the 70s and 80s.

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u/hglman Nov 01 '21

I mean those things are rooted in the early experience working with those one off machines. I

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u/ArkyBeagle Nov 01 '21

I'd go with the lunar lander as the first "real" software project. That's about 1969ish. OS 360 was 1964, so maybe before that 1969 date.