1.5. Summary

From its earliest days the software industry has been characterized by rapid and continual change in the domains in which software is applied, and in the underlying technologies they target and use. Coping with these changes has been a struggle for every software engineer and every software-intensive system that has been built. However, in the past few years the speed and depth of these changes has begun to increase. These changes are completely reshaping both the software industry and many of the business communities it serves. Many people believe we have seen the start of a new era of computing—the Internet age.

In this new era, software is a dominant factor in many of the current business initiatives. Software is essential for ...

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