Software as History Embodied
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing · 2009
In the very last published article of his long and distinguished career, the eminent historian of computing Michael Mahoney asked a simple but profound question: ‘‘What makes the history of software hard? In his characteristically playful style, Mike was engaging both with an issue of central importance to historians— namely, how can we begin to come to grips with the formidable challenges of writing the history of software— but also one of great interest to practitioners. Since electronic computing’s earliest days, the problem of software has loomed large in the industry literature. The history of software is hard, Mahoney argued, because software itself is hard: hard to design, develop, use, understand, and maintain. It is this last challenge posed by software—the challenge of software maintenance—that I take up in this essay. The problem of maintenance is a ubiquitous but neglected element of the history of technology. All complex technological systems eventually break down and require repair (some more so than others), and, in fact, as David Edgerton has suggested, maintenance is probably the central activity of most technological societies. But maintenance is also low-status, difficult, and risky. Engineers and inventors don’t like maintenance, and generally don’t do maintenance—therefore, historians of technology have largely ignored it.