History of Software Engineering

Question 1

Because programming required such painstaking planning in machine code and computers were slow, most programs were

Answer 1

not that complex. Their value was in calculating things faster than a person could do by hand, which meant thousands of calculations in a minute rather than one calculation in a minute.

Question 2

Computer programmers were not solving problems that had no solutions; they were…

Answer 2

translating existing solutions (for example, a quadratic formula) into the notation a computer understood.

Question 3

Computers power was in

Answer 3

accelerating old tasks, not in creating new realities or facilitating new tasks

Question 4

The birth of software engineering did not come until programmers started

Answer 4

solving problems that didn’t have existing solutions, or were new ideas entirely.

Question 5

It wasn’t until the late 1960s when the first truly large software projects were attempted commercially, and software had to

Answer 5

actually perform.

Question 6

What was one of the first big projects?

Answer 6

IBM 360 operating system.

Question 7

First software engineering conference in 1968

Answer 7

attendees speculated about why projects were shipping late, why they were over budget, and what they could do about it.