Computer software for the professional. Its evolution and current status.

Abstract

The development of software during the past 30 years has been just as dramatic in many respects as that of hardware. Whereas future developments in hardware technology can be expected to provide smaller, cheaper, and more powerful computers as has been the case during the past 25 years, future developments in software technology can be expected to play the equally important role of expanding the user base for computers, thus making it economically feasible to exploit new technologies on the hardware side. Although today's computer software offerings are very broad indeed in terms of the variety of tasks they perform, one can reasonably expect that entirely new uses will be found for computers, through the development of new types of software, in the future. By exploiting the huge memory capacities of today's newer computers, future software will be much easier to use and will be capable of carrying out several tasks simultaneously. It will also be much more forgiving, adapting itself automatically to the work style (and probably also to the mistakes) of the user. By incorporating at least a part of what constitutes the stock of knowledge in particular applications, so-called "expert systems," one may expect future software, particularly in areas such as financial and statistical analysis, to enable the computer to work more as a partner or colleague than as an unintelligent (albeit very fast) tool. Perhaps to an even greater extent in the future than has been true to date, the evolution of the computer as a useful tool will depend on software, rather than hardware, innovation. The hardware advances necessary to place hearing, speaking, seeing, and even thinking computers on everyone's desktop, each of which would be able to provide ready access to truly mind-boggling quantities of information, is at hand. Only the software really remains to be developed.