Postmodern software development

We discuss the ‘software crisis ’ as a social and cultural phenomenon, arguing that it can be viewed as (one more) manifestation of postmodernism. We illustrate our argument with a range of examples taken from software engineering, demonstrating software engineering’s roots in (and commitment to) modernism and the nature of its fin de siècle predicament. We argue that current attempts within software engineering to respond to the software crisis have not been adequate and that a new, more humble, approach to software development is required