8 ◾ Software Engineering: The Current Practice
1.2 Origins of Software
In the context of the ubiquity of software in today’s world, it can come as a surprise
how new software technology is. e newness of software can be illustrated by a
bit of historical trivia: e term software appeared in print for the first time only
in 1958 in an article written by the statistician John Wilder Tukey, as reported by
Leonhardt (2000). Before that, software was so rare that there was no need for a
special word. In a short time after 1958, the term software became widespread, and
software became pervasive. Contemporary economy and our way of life depend on
software, and without software, most of our economy and a large part of our daily
routine would grind ...