IT challenges, software today and tomorrow

Jeff Zhuk

Internet Technology School, Inc.

Fri Feb 20 15:10:00 NZDT 2004 in Room 031, MSCS

Abstract

We have not changed our way of writing software during the past twenty years. We have not moved far from the UNIX operational environment (which was a big hit thirty years ago). Our computers are much faster, but for the regular user, they are as stupid as they were forty years ago. We add power but we fail to add common sense to computers, we cannot help them learn, and we routinely lose professional knowledge gained by millions of knowledge workers.

Meanwhile, best practices in software and knowledge engineering are reaching the point of critical mass. By learning, understanding, and integrating them, we can turn things around. We might be able to improve the reliability of quickly changing environments by using distributed self-healing networks and knowledge base-powered application solutions.

We can finally stop re-writing traditional address book, scheduling, inventory, and order applications. We will shift our focus from ironing out all possible business cases in our design and code to creating flexible application mechanisms that allow us to change and introduce new business rules on the fly. Coming changes are similar to the transition from structural to object-oriented programming. We are going back to school.