The next 10,0002 years. II

For pt.I see ibid., vol.4, p.64-70 (1996). As microprocessor advances begin to level off, communication network deployment will keep accelerating, and software engineering must face the prospect of radical change if it is to keep pace. The paper considers how the intersection of these ascending and descending technologies will propel the high-tech world into a new model of computing by the year 2012. Software is the steam that drives the engines of the Information Age, but clearly it is not keeping up with developments on the hardware side. Historical trends suggest that further progress in programmer productivity and programming-language power over the next 10,000₂ years is highly unlikely. With a large percentage of programmers maintaining legacy code, the resources available for innovation are limited. In fact, software innovation will have to come from a five percent fringe of artisans and nontraditional thinkers outside the current programming language and software engineering establishment