

The Humble Programmer (1972) [pdf] - djohnsonm
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd03xx/EWD340.PDF

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h2s

        In this sense the electronic industry has not solved a
        single problem, it has only created them, it has
        created the problem of using its products. To put it in
        another way; as the power of available machines grew by
        a factor of more than a thousand, society's ambition to
        apply these machines grew in proportion, and it was the
        poor programmer who found his job in this exploded
        field of tension between ends and means.
    

This is a beautifully succinct and profound summation of the entire history of
software engineering. I enjoyed this all the more because I initially skimmed
past the introductory page and have only just realised that Dijsktra wrote it.

    
    
        As an aside I would like to insert a warning to those
        who identify the difficulty of the programming task
        with the struggle against the inadequacies of our
        current tools, because they might conclude that, once
        our tools will be much more adequate, programming will
        no longer be a problem.
    

I think this is as true today as it was 40 years ago. In fact it almost makes
the idea of "No Silver Bullet" seem derivative.

