Software crisis

Software crisis was a term used in the early days of computing science. The term was used to describe the impact of rapid increases in computer power and the complexity of the problems which could be tackled. In essence, it refers to the difficulty of writing correct, understandable, and verifiable computer programs. The roots of the software crisis are complexity, expectations, and change.


The causes of the software crisis were linked to the overall complexity of hardware and the software development process. The crisis manifested itself in several ways:

* Projects running over-budget.
* Projects running over-time.
* Software was very inefficient.
* Software was of low quality.
* Software often did not meet requirements.
* Projects were unmanageable and code difficult to maintain.
* Software was never delivered.

Many of the software problems were caused by increasingly complex hardware. In his essay, Dijkstra noted that the newer computers in his day "embodied such serious flaws that [he] felt that with a single stroke the progress of computing science had been retarded by at least ten years"[2]. He also believed that the influence of hardware on software was too frequently overlooked.