Software Engineering Past, Present, and Future with Grady Booch

About this episode

The episode features a discussion with software engineering pioneer Grady Booch about the evolution and future of software engineering.

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…

People in this episode

Hosts: Bryan Cantrill, Adam Leventhal

Guest: Grady Booch

Topics covered

• software engineering history
• real-time distributed systems
• software crisis
• object-oriented programming
• architecture decisions
• core skills in software engineering
• book recommendations

Keywords

• software engineering
• Grady Booch
• real-time systems
• object-oriented programming
• software crisis
• architecture
• book recommendations

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: IBM

Books & works: The Sciences of the Artificial, The Mythical Man-Month, Refactoring

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