All indications are that this proportion will continue to grow into the twenty first century. This growth has been achieved despite the fact that much of the software produced has been of a rather dubious quality, and that its production processes have been at worst chaotic and on average poorly managed. These problems became glaringly apparent in the early 1970s when some very expensive software development projects had to be abandoned and the possibility of humans being killed or injured by software failure became apparent. One consequence of this focus on the engineering of software was the development of the initial Ada language, known as Ada '83, in the early 1980s. The intention was to produce an environment which encouraged developers to apply the established principles of good software engineering practice.
Software development is a complex activity.
It will take the rest of this section, and subsequently the book, to start to explain exactly how complex the activity of software development is and from these considerations to obtain an understanding of what is required to become an effective software developer .