Software Engineering Past, Present, and Future with Grady Booch

Bryan and Adam were joined by Grady Booch, software engineering pioneer and living legend, to speak about the past present and future of software engineering. History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme!

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest, Grady Booch.

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them (some LLM assistance):

• SAGE as foundational real-time distributed system
• Software crisis demand outpaced ability to build reliable systems
• Margaret Hamilton (SAGE → Apollo) and the term “software engineering”
• UML
• Rational Software founded (1982); acquired by IBM (2003)
• OO overshot via inheritance; core idea (objects as cognitive units) endured
• LLMs are unreliable narrators - they cannot do abductive reasoning
• Architecture = decisions with high cost of change
• Core skills persist: abstraction, coupling, cohesion, judgment
• Fear cycles repeat; fundamentals endure

Grady's Book Recommendations

• The Sciences of the Artificial — Herbert Simon
• The Mythical Man-Month — Fred Brooks
• Refactoring — Martin Fowler

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!