Aug 1, 2026 Capability hardware didn't fail. It arrived 40 years early. Memory safety at the hardware level has been possible since the 1970s. hardware-assisted-safetycapability-hardwarecherisoftware-history
Jul 26, 2026 IBM's Zero-Defect Process Delivered 0.1 Bugs Per KLOC. The Industry Abandoned It Anyway. IBM's Cleanroom engineering achieved defect rates 100× better than industry average, then faded into obscurity. cleanroom-correctnesszero-defectssoftware-historyprocess
Jul 17, 2026 Donald Knuth Wanted Programs to Read Like Literature. The Compiler Had Other Ideas. Literate programming promised that code should be written for humans first and machines second. Four decades later, almost nobody writes that way. literate-programmingknuthsoftware-historydocumentation
Jul 12, 2026 Fagan Inspections Found 90% of Defects Before Testing. Then We Stopped Doing Them. Michael Fagan's structured inspection process at IBM caught nearly all defects before they reached a compiler. fagan-inspectionscode-reviewsoftware-historyprocess
Jun 10, 2026 NASA Ran 27 Copies of the Same Program. The Bugs Voted as a Bloc. N-version programming promised that independent teams would make independent mistakes. n-version-programmingnasafault-tolerancesoftware-history
