Techies as non-technological factors in software engineering?

Abstract

The author discusses human issues in software engineering and considers two technological factors that offered dramatic productivity and quality growth in the last decade. The individual differences in the performance range among software engineers are reviewed. Steps to reduce the wide variation in performance among individuals are considered. The first technological factor is having bigger machines with more memory that allowed software engineers more time to work on the task rather than wrestling with machine limitations that inhibited the task. The second technological factor was Lisp machines and the powerful programming environments that accompanied them. The author observes that hardware will still play a dramatic role in productivity growth, but that nontechnological market factors will limit the extent to which the best software ideas will be translated into industry-wide advances.