Editing Software crisis

{{Short description|Term in early computing history}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2017}}

'''Software crisis''' is a term used in the early days of [[computing science]] for the difficulty of writing useful and efficient computer programs in the required time. The software crisis was due to the rapid increases in computer power and the [[Programming complexity|complexity]] of the problems that could be tackled. With the increase in the complexity of the software, many software problems arose because existing methods were inadequate.

== History ==
The term "software crisis" was coined by some attendees at the first [[NATO Software Engineering Conferences|NATO Software Engineering Conference]] in 1968 at [[Garmisch]], Germany.<ref name="nato">{{cite web|url=http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/NATO/NATOReports/index.html|title=NATO Software Engineering Conference 1968|access-date=26 April 2017}}</ref><ref name="nato2">{{cite web|url=http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/NATO/nato1968.PDF|title=Report on a conference sponsored by the NATO SCIENCE COMMITTEE Garmisch, Germany, 7th to 11th October 1968|access-date=26 April 2017}}</ref> [[Edsger Dijkstra]]'s 1972 [[Turing Award]] Lecture makes reference to this same problem:<ref name="ewd340">{{cite web|url=http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340.html|title=E.W.Dijkstra Archive: The Humble Programmer (EWD 340)|access-date=26 April 2017}}</ref>

{{Quotation|text=The major cause of the software crisis is that the machines have become several orders of magnitude more powerful! To put it quite bluntly: as long as there were no machines, programming was no problem at all; when we had a few weak computers, programming became a mild problem, and now we have gigantic computers, programming has become an equally gigantic problem.|author=[[Edsger Dijkstra]]|title=''[[Edsger Dijkstra#Writings by E.W. Dijkstra|The Humble Programmer (EWD340)]]''|source=[[Communications of the ACM]]}}

== Causes ==
The causes of the software crisis were linked to the overall complexity of hardware and the software development process. The crisis manifested itself in several ways:
* Projects running over-budget
* Projects running over-time
* [[Program optimization|Software was very inefficient]]
* Software was of low quality
* Software often did not meet requirements
* [[Spaghetti code|Projects were unmanageable and code difficult to maintain]]
* [[Vaporware|Software was never delivered]]

The main cause is that improvements in computing power had outpaced the ability of programmers to effectively use those capabilities. Various [[Software development process|processes and methodologies]] have been developed over the last few decades to improve [[software quality management]] such as [[procedural programming]] and [[object-oriented programming]]. However, software projects that are large, complicated, poorly specified, or involve unfamiliar aspects, are still vulnerable to large, unanticipated problems.

== See also ==
* [[AI winter]]
* [[List of failed and overbudget custom software projects]]
* [[Fred Brooks]]
* [[System accident]]
* [[Technological singularity]]

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== External links ==
* [http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd03xx/EWD340.PDF Edsger Dijkstra: The Humble Programmer] (PDF file, 473kB)
* [[Brian Randell]]: [http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/NATO/ The NATO Software Engineering Conferences]
* Markus Bautsch: ''Cycles of Software Crises'' in: [https://web.archive.org/web/20080913120558/http://www.enisa.europa.eu/doc/pdf/publications/enisa_quarterly_12_07.pdf ENISA Quarterly on ''Secure Software''] (PDF file; 1,86MB)
* [[Tony Hoare|Hoare]] 1996, [https://www.gwern.net/docs/math/1996-hoare.pdf "How Did Software Get So Reliable Without Proof?"]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Software Crisis}}
[[Category:Software quality]]
[[Category:History of software]]
[[Category:1968 neologisms]]