From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry

This book is scholarly, but accessible to the ordinary public, albeit people who are keenly interested in tables of rates of growth. The author describes the sources of his research humorously and in a most interesting manner. I give him very high marks for that, for letting the general public appreciate how hard it is to do research of this kind, sifting through all the junk for the few gems. I thought the author's technical competence was excellent, too, and his insights into such subtleties as operating systems was great. I have only two complaints. He too often says "The story of ... is well documented elsewhere." A brief recap would have helped for those who don't have time to read the other sources. Second, there is exactly one picture in the book, and while it is great (a stack of 60,000 punch cards for the SAGE system), I wish there would have been a few more, especially of earlier systems. But overall a fabulous book, very neatly wedged between business history and computer history!

From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog may sound like a mystifying title, but this book provides a reasonable overview of the history of the software industry. At times, given the ups and downs in the industry, it can't avoid sounding like a catalog of defunct firms and obsolete software. However, this chronology is quite useful for anyone who wants to come up to speed very quickly and very generally on the main trends in the industry. Author Martin Campbell-Kelly covers some of the industry's seminal events and the main categories of software. Vexingly or refreshingly, he takes pains to say as little about Microsoft as possible, making it clear that others have written enough on that subject. So, with that absence duly noted, we recommend this book to those who want an inside history of the software industry, from massive mainframes to little blue cartoon porcupines.

There has been a need for an authoritative history of the software industry, and this book fills the gap. It is entertaining and gives an excellent account of the origins and development of the various sectors of the industry. Its focus is wholly on the United States, a decision for which the author gives full justification, but despite my interest in the UK software industry I still found the book fascinating and illuminating. It provides an important corrective to a number of myths, from the Software Crisis to the dominance of Microsoft, and offers plenty of evidence in support of its analysis. There are entertaining illustrations at the beginning of each chapter. As a university lecturer, I shall certainly be using this book extensively and referring my students to it.

I wasn?t sure how I would like Martin Campbell-Kelly?s new book since I have grown up with the software industry--I started as a programmer in 1973?and thought I had a pretty good understanding of it. But on the contrary I found his book fascinating. Over all I thought Campbell-Kelly weaved together many hard-to-find facts and statistics into a comprehensive, well-researched, and well-written story of how the software industry evolvedBasically, it reviews the development of the various software industry segments; what we now refer to as professional services companies, enterprise product software companies, personal computer software companies and game companies. For each, it describes the major events that created these industry segments?e.g. in 1970 IBM unbundled its software pricing from its hardware pricing ushering in age of product software companies; the major companies who dominated these segments; and the business models. A few things that were of particular interest to me. When I grew up in the software business, we used lines of code as a way to estimate the work it would take to create an application. I have overseen the development of systems with millions of lines of code. So I was surprised to learn how few lines of code were in DOS 2.0, just 20,000+, and even more surprised to learn that the venerable early business language Fortran, in its first incarnation, was only 18,000 lines of code. And it helped put into context what I have lived through. For example, in 1973, straight out of C.C.N.Y., I first entered the job market as young Cobol programmer trainee at Royal-Insurance Company in New York. As a youngster I had no awareness that Thomas Watson Jr. bet his business on the IBM360, or that it was the reason for IBM?s unprecedented industry dominance. I just knew that I worked on IBM 370-145, an updated, at that time, version of the IBM 360. And does this sound familiar? ?Never before has the stock market shown quite so much enthusiasm about an industry as it has lately about the computer industry. Recent prices of computer stocks represent some of the highest prices-earning ratios ever recorded. Even shares of giant I.B.M, which increased six fold between 1957 and late 1966, have doubled since. In July the market valued I.B.M., whose physical assets amount to less than $6 billion , at more than $40 billion?more than any other company in the word, actually as much as gross national product of Italy. And the market value of smaller and newer companies in the industry has gone up even more steeply than I.B.M.?s. In less than three years the price of University Computing Co. of Dallas rose form $1.50 a share(adjusted for splits) to $155. The stock market valued this newcomers, who sales last year were than $17 million, at more than $600 million.? This quote that Cambell-Kelly provides is about the timeframe 1964-1968, which was another time period of ?irrational exuberance,? like our recent dot.com debacle. Only I hope that our r

I wasn't sure how I would like Martin Campbell-Kelly's new book since I have grown up with the software industry--I started as a programmer in 1973-and thought I had a pretty good understanding of it. But on the contrary I found his book fascinating. Over all I thought Campbell-Kelly weaved together many hard-to-find facts and statistics into a comprehensive, well-researched, and well-written story of how the software industry evolvedBasically, it reviews the development of the various software industry segments; what we now refer to as professional services companies, enterprise product software companies, personal computer software companies and game companies. For each, it describes the major events that created these industry segments-e.g. in 1970 IBM unbundled its software pricing from its hardware pricing ushering in age of product software companies; the major companies who dominated these segments; and the business models. A few things that were of particular interest to me. When I grew up in the software business, we used lines of code as a way to estimate the work it would take to create an application. I have overseen the development of systems with millions of lines of code. So I was surprised to learn how few lines of code were in DOS 2.0, just 20,000+, and even more surprised to learn that the venerable early business language Fortran, in its first incarnation, was only 18,000 lines of code. And it helped put into context what I have lived through. For example, in 1973, straight out of C.C.N.Y., I first entered the job market as young Cobol programmer trainee at Royal-Insurance Company in New York. As a youngster I had no awareness that Thomas Watson Jr. bet his business on the IBM360, or that it was the reason for IBM's unprecedented industry dominance. I just knew that I worked on IBM 370-145, an updated, at that time, version of the IBM 360. And does this sound familiar? "Never before has the stock market shown quite so much enthusiasm about an industry as it has lately about the computer industry. Recent prices of computer stocks represent some of the highest prices-earning ratios ever recorded. Even shares of giant I.B.M, which increased six fold between 1957 and late 1966, have doubled since. In July the market valued I.B.M., whose physical assets amount to less than $6 billion , at more than $40 billion-more than any other company in the word, actually as much as gross national product of Italy. And the market value of smaller and newer companies in the industry has gone up even more steeply than I.B.M.'s. In less than three years the price of University Computing Co. of Dallas rose form $1.50 a share(adjusted for splits) to $155. The stock market valued this newcomers, who sales last year were than $17 million, at more than $600 million." This quote that Cambell-Kelly provides is about the timeframe 1964-1968, which was another time period of "irrational exuberance," like our recent dot.com debacle. Only I hope that our r