Software and its rapid evolution

In the early days of computing, hardware was much more important than it is today, its cost was much higher, and its reliability, storage capacity, and processing power were what determined the performance of a given product. Software took a back seat, it was not given much importance, most of it was developed and used by the same person or company, with that same person or company being the one who wrote it, executed it, and if it failed, debugged it. The design was in someone's mind and documentation did not exist; if something failed, that person would always be there to fix the error. Given this situation, companies focused on improving equipment performance with regard to hardware, reducing costs and increasing calculation speed and storage capacity. Because of this, hardware developed rapidly and computer systems were increasingly complex, requiring software that was, in turn, more complex for their operation. It was then that the first companies entirely dedicated to software development emerged and labor mobility began, so with the departure of a worker, maintenance or modification of the programs developed by him was unlikely. Due to the lack of a methodology and consistent documentation, programs presented, in many cases, errors and inconsistencies, so they were in continuous debugging, thereby increasing their costs. It was faster in many cases, to start from scratch than to modify what had already been done, but this did not exempt them from errors and future modifications, so the situation would become the same again. Today, everything has changed and software has become the main cost element compared to hardware, which has led to the emergence and development of new technologies that comprehensively address the problem by covering all its phases, which for the most part were not considered in traditional developments, and which are fundamental in reducing costs and deadlines, as well as the quality of the final product. This is what we call software engineering, defined as “the systematic treatment of all phases of the software life cycle