Humans have not been writing software for very long. We’ve been writing algorithms and mathematical procedures for over two thousand years, but this isn’t quite the same thing as using a modern computer programming language to solve problems.
The Fortran language was developed starting in 1954. The C language was developed in the 1970’s, and C++ was developed in the 1980’s.
Companies have only been employing a significant number of software developers for the past sixty years or so.
With the recent advances we’ve seen in Artificial Intelligence, I wonder how long companies are going to continue employing a lot of software developers. At least for now, I don’t think programming is a dead-end career.
What is the most significant condition for writing quality software? Good human communication!
We’ve seen examples of a single software developer creating something amazing. However, most software is written by teams of developers. The more people there are working on a project, the more important it becomes to coordinate this work.
Fred Brooks realized this when he wrote The Mythical Man-Month, published in 1975. Martin Fowler wrote about the Unified Modeling Language, a way for people to describe software designs. The “Gang of Four” described several useful Design Patterns that developers can use to solve common problems. Jeff Sutherland wrote about how Scrum can make software teams more effective.
Many others have tried to improve how humans can work together to write quality software. It’s not easy! Some development tools can help, such as Git and Github.
Still, it all comes down to how well human software developers can communicate with each other. If you want to write better software, become a better communicator!
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