What is software? Even today, people both inside and outside the software industry differ on what the term means. For example, many today equate software with computer code. In 1980, I co-authored the first book on software configuration management. We chose to define the concept in terms more global than was in vogue then (and for many today). For us, software included both computer code and the predecessor documentation that led up to the computer code, for example the code’s requirements and design specifications.

Haigh’s paper looks at the notion of software during the 1960s, while our book had a 1970s perspective. He sets the stage for his book by commenting, in his opening paragraph, on the notion of application programming:

They [i.e., data processing pioneers] soon discovered that application program creation was costly, difficult, and ongoing. By the mid-1950s, they had come to care a great deal about programming. But only around 1960, however, would a well-informed data-processing manager have nodded knowledgably if software came up in conversation. During the 1950s the term was not used, although hardware was already well known as a colloquial term for computer equipment. When software did achieve currency, it was as hardware’s complement, describing everything else the computer manufacturer provided. This ensured that term’s widespread, if ill-defined, use (p. 5).

The paper then goes on to describe how the term software was used during the 1960s. This description provides some interesting insight into the 1960s software industry.