The Divine Software Engineering Comedy -- Inferno: The Okinawa Files

TL;DR

This paper offers a darkly humorous critique of the future of software engineering, highlighting concerns about unskilled developers, rapid technological change, and the field's chaotic evolution, based on discussions from a recent symposium.

Contribution

It provides a satirical, reflective perspective on the challenges and potential pitfalls facing the future of software engineering, inspired by a recent expert symposium.

Findings

Software makers often lack proper skills but still complete projects.

The field is evolving too quickly to learn from past lessons.

Technologies are proliferating rapidly, causing chaos.

Abstract

In June 2024 I co-organized the FUture of Software Engineering symposium in Okinawa, Japan. Me, Andrian Marcus, Takashi Kobayashi and Shinpei Hayashi were general chairs, Nicole Novielli, Kevin Moran, Yutaro Kashiwa and Masanari Kondo were program chairs, some members of my group, Carmen Armenti, Stefano Campanella, Roberto Minelli, were the tables, can't have a room with only chairs, after all. We invited a crowd of people to discuss what future software engineering has. FUSE became a 3-day marathon on whether there is actually a future at all for SE. This essay is a slightly dark take about what I saw at that event, very loosely based on the discussions that took place, adding some healthy sarcasm and cynicism, the intellectual salt and pepper I never seem to run out of. I listened to the brilliant people who gathered to talk about where we're headed, and distilled three nightmares headed in our direction: software makers who don't know what they're doing, but get the job done anyway, a field moving so fast it can't remember its own lessons, and technologies multiplying like rabbits in Spring. So, let's start. The future, eh? The future of software engineering looks like a car crash in slow motion: you can see it coming but you can't look away. The thing is...