Vviewpoints

I l l u s t r a t I o n b y a l I C I a k u b I s t a / a n D r I J b o r y s a s s o C I a t e s

SOfTWarE DEvELOPmEnT IS always about acquiring knowledge. How we get that knowledge can vary, but it is never enhanced by being lazy in thought or deed and there are capabilities in modern systems development that can encourage laziness. It was not so years ago…

When small Was Big

When I started programming professionally in the early 1970s, the only available computer was a large main-frame. When I say large, I mean physically; in memory size it was miniscule.a The computer’s primary function was running a steelworks and any software development task requiring computer resources had to wait until the machine was not engaged in more important tasks. This would generally be around 2:00 a.m.

overnight Delivery

Any computer operation: compile, as-
semble, or test, could only take place
overnight and we had to wait until the
next morning to find out if it worked.
So every software development ac-
tivity had to be very, very carefully
thought out. Machine runs were ter-
ribly time-consuming and extremely
expensive—much more than the cost
of programmers. So to get the best use
out of the scarce machine time we did
a lot of desk-checking. We reviewed
and inspected everything: documen-
tation, code, tests. We even developed
an inspection technique wherein pro-
a It was an ICL 1901 series with 8k (words)
of memory.
grammers would “play computer” by
manually walking through assembly
language programs with people tak-
ing the roles of registers, accumula-
tors, and memory locations. Test data
was written on slips of paper that
were passed across the table from
memory to accumulators or registers
and back again. The program stack
was just that: a stack of these pieces of
paper. This process was very tedious,
it was very slow, and it required a lot
of time and a lot of effort. But it made
you think.

Quick Return

Fast-forward 40 years and things are different. Most of us carry, in our pockets or in our purses, more computing power than existed in the whole North of England in 1972. Chances are you could not find even

The Business of Software
When faster Is Slower
How the speed of modern tools may decelerate development.
DOI: 10.1145/2505338