Postmodern Programming:How I Learned to Stop Programming and Love Scrapheap Software - Softcover

With hardly anyone realizing it, software development has fundamentally changed, in ways that parallel the broader cultural shift from "modernism" to "postmodernism." "Modern" applications include compilers; aircraft avionics; and nuclear power plant control software. Postmodern programs include computer games; viruses; aircraft personal entertainment systems; groupware for organizing protests for (and against) nuclear power plans; integrated supply chain management systems; and systems for finding the cheapest downloadable Paris Hilton video. Postmodern software doesn't just do different things: it is created and evolved in fundamentally different ways, with different tools. Exemplary "modern" software development technologies included Pascal, 7-bit ASCII, and Entity-Relationship Diagrams. Exemplary "postmodern" technologies include Perl, HTML, Google, and Wikipedia. Postmodern programming rejects overarching grand narratives: it is built up, following practice, rather than created top-down from theory. If you program, you need to understand this revolutionary shift. Postmodern Programming illuminates it, and reveals its implications for everyone who writes code -- or relies on it.

Dragos Manolescu is a software architect with ThoughtWorks, Inc., where he works on architecture evaluation and enterprise integration projects. Involved with the patterns community since 1996, Dragos chaired the PLoP 1999 conference, contributed to "Pattern Languages of Program Design 4" (Addison-Wesley, 2000), and coauthored "Integration Patterns "(Microsoft Press, 2004).

Markus Voelter is a consultant and coach for software technology and engineering. Markus focuses on software architecture, middleware, and model-driven software development. He is the author of several patterns, the coauthor of "Server Component Patterns" and "Remoting Patterns" (both Wiley Patterns Series), and a regular speaker at conferences worldwide.

James Noble is professor of computer science and software engineering at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, where he researches object-oriented approaches to user and programmer interface design. He is the coauthor of "Small Memory Software: Patterns for Systems with Limited Memory" (Addison-Wesley, 2001).