Software crisis in 1960s What is software Crisis?

Software Crisis occurred in the late 1960s  because of

• Software systems were more complex

• The rapid development of hardware 

• The massive increase in the software demand

• Increased the cost of developing the software

http://www.chris-kimble.com/Courses/World_Med_MBA/Software_Crisis.html

Because of the rapid development in hardware, based on Integrated circuits, software technology was far more behind from the new hardware technology. Because of the complexity of new software development projects like airport control systems, defense systems, railway systems were not completed before deadlines therefore, big companies and governments that invested in those projects lost more than a million dollars.

Because of software crisis

• Waste of lots of time and money that were invested into software development projects

• Some programs were unable to fulfill user’s requirements
• Increase of software system errors
• The software was very inefficient

https://histinf.blogs.upv.es/2010/12/28/ingenieria-del-software/

To avoid, at least reduce software crisis, the shortcomings of software technologies were discussed at the 1968 NATO conference on Software Engineering.

The discussions cover all aspects of software including

• relation of software to the hardware of computers
• design of software
• production, or implementation of software
• distribution of software
• service on software.

Read more on NATO conference in 1968 on Software Engineering

As a solution to the above discussion, structured programming came to light. Structured programming was focused on solving the software crisis by

• Increasing productivity of the programmer
• reducing program maintenance complexity
• Improving the efficiency of the program
• Minimizing the complexity of the program
• Improving the reliability of the program