The software crisis

By 1968 the "Software Development Problem", seen in its more extreme form in IBM's OS/360 development project, was considered so severe that the NATO Science Committee sponsored a conference in Garmisch, Germany to discuss it (Naur and Randell, 1969). The conference, entitled \Software Engineering", was the first in this field. The following year saw a follow-on conference, this time in Rome. The Rome conference focused on the question of how to make the development of computer applications and programs more \engineering-like". The idea of standardized parts that could be reused was raised as a possible solution to the crisis (Randell and Buxton, 1970).

Since these early times, software engineering, first as sub-field of computer science and now, perhaps, as a field in its own right, has tried to turn the art of programming into an engineering discipline. To a large degree this has succeeded. In his book "Software Engineering, a Practitioner's Approach" Pressman explains that "software engineering has evolved from an obscure idea...to a legitimate engineering discipline" and, as a result, \throughout the industry, `software engineer' has replaced `programmer' as the job title of preference" (Pressman, 2001). The original idea of reuse has, however, proved elusive. Despite much research and many attempts, it has failed to become standard practice (Krueger, 1992).

References above can be seen in the Bibliography.