The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - 9780321903426

Pioneering software engineer Capers Jones has written the first and only definitive history of the entire software engineering industry. Drawing on his extraordinary vantage point as a leading practitioner for several decades, Jones reviews the entire history of IT and software engineering, assesses its impact on society, and previews its future.

One decade at a time, Jones assesses emerging trends and companies, winners and losers, new technologies, methods, tools, languages, productivity/quality benchmarks, challenges, risks, professional societies, and more. He quantifies both beneficial and harmful software inventions; accurately estimates the size of both the US and global software industries; and takes on “unexplained mysteries” such as why and how programming languages gain and lose popularity.

Inspired by and modeled after the Paul Starr’s Pulitzer-Prize winning The Social Transformation of American Medicine, Jones’s new book is a tour de force - and compelling reading for everyone who wants to understand how software came to be what it is today.