Software Engineering Trends

When I got introduced to the world of computing, we were taught about general purpose computers and special purpose computers. General purpose computers formed the section which we call computers in common parlance. Those were heydays of mainframe, mini and micro computers. I was lucky to have worked with all of them, both as a user and a programmer

Bastions of mainframes were threatened by much simpler yet powerful personal computers, in 1980s. Many had written obituaries of mainframes, in favour of new generation computers.

Two decades later, now mainframes seems to be coming back with vengeance and they seems to be getting set to form backbones of social IT architecture. What we have witnessed is, both co-existing and interacting with each other.

On the other hand, computing power of microprocessor is enabling almost every device now. Most common example being mobile phones. These devices are many times more powerful, in terms of their computing capability, computers of 1980s.

Particularly interesting is that technology is now reaching out to the common man and it is changing life in ways one may not even dream to think of, with convergence of computing and communication.

Software weaves together these apparently diverse world, and has been one central force that made these changes possible. World of software development, adapting itself to address current and future needs of computing, is interesting to observe. Even as a developer, I have been doing it and I will continue to. This blog is my personal observations and thoughts on such a world of software development