Software engineering...an economic perspective
J. H. Morrissey, Lianren Wu · International Conference on Software Engineering · 1979
The production of software can be viewed as an economic, as well as an engineering, process. Since the prime factor of production is the labor inputs of programmers and systems analysts, the personnel characteristics and employment trends of these occupations in the United States are reviewed. These labor factors are then related to prior and expected trends in the installation and utilization of computer equipment. A discussion of programming labor productivity is followed by a digression on the diffusion rates of technology. A brief outlook of plausible software developments suggests two areas perhaps deserving more software engineering research and development attention.