Software Development's Evolution towards Product Design

An anonymous reader writes: "The Lost Garden site has an excellent post on software development's evolution into product design. He starts with the first attempts at software design (for yourself or a colleague), and brings the conversation forward to modern design settings." From the article: "At the dawn of software history, programmers wrote software for other programmers. This was a golden era. Life was so simple. The programmers understood their own technical needs quite intimately and were able to produce software that served those needs. The act of software development was a closed circuit. A programmer could sit in a corner and write code that he wanted. By default it also happened to apply to other programmers."

Software design

[nizo]

Randomly throwing elements into software from the ground up rarely works well; everyone knows that early design is important for the software to be easy to use. In fact, intelligent design saves people from thinking about the software creation process at all, since the intelligent designer keeps the underlying processes of the software hidden from the user. Put your faith in a good intelligent designer and you can simply use the software and remain blissfully ignorant of how the software actually works.

Software Evolution?

[n6kuy]

Momma told me software was created by Flying Spaghetti Monster...

Re:Software design

[imstanny]

Put your faith in a good intelligent designer and you can simply use the software and remain blissfully ignorant of how the software actually works.

I think you copied/pasted this from a religious thread.

Re:Software Evolution?

[Spy der Mann]

Momma told me software was created by Flying Spaghetti Monster...

Eeeew spaguetti code! >_<

Re:Software design

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Actually, I put in some features to decieve you - to test your faith in the software.

You believe in the user?

[Tackhead]

> Randomly throwing elements into software from the ground up rarely works well; everyone knows that early design is important for the software to be easy to use. In fact, intelligent design saves people from thinking about the software creation process at all, since the intelligent designer keeps the underlying processes of the software hidden from the user.

RAM: "You believe in the user?"
Crom: "Sure I do! If I didn't have a User, than who wrote me?"
RAM: "That's what you're doing down here. Master Control Program's been snapping up all us programs who believe..."

He needs a new diagram at the end

[egarland]

There needs to be a new little diagram called 'The Open Source Era'. It would start with the programmer throwing the 'Biz Guy' out the window. Then he'd put up a wall labled 'Skinning' between him and the 'Designer' and the 'Interaction Dude' and going back to work.

Hmm

[ENOENT]

So why is it that all these engineers wrote all of their ancient programs in COBOL?

Hmm???

Re:Walk a mile in their shoes...

[computational super]

And then an anonymous coward says, "Well, you should have said no", so you hunt him down, tie his hands behind his back like Kevin Spacey did to that fat guy he made eat the spaghetti sauce in "Seven", and force him to implement a fully SOAP and BPEL compliant Web Service-based SOA solution. In Lisp. Using Notepad. On Windows 3.1. In a shared cubicle.