End of Software, The: Finding Security, Flexibility, and Profit in the On Demand Future

Assisting Technology

However, process alone is not enough; technology must also contribute. At the dawn of the computer age, programmers had a hard time coaxing computers to tell them much about the programs they ran. Programmers were forced to invent different ways to obtain information about the programs they used. Eventually, programmers began to detect bugs by putting print instructions and other similar constructs inside their programs. By doing this, programmers were able to trace the program path and the values of key variables.

Although print statements were an improvement in debugging techniques, they still required a considerable amount of programmer time and effort. Programmers therefore needed a tool that could execute one instruction ...