[hravnx]

"There was almost no thought around how software should be developed."

Really, Joel? So all the various software methodologies of the seventies and eighties, all the CASE tools of the nineties, Extreme Programming etc etc etc - all of this does somehow not count as "thought on how software should be developed"?!

[radmuzom]

He is not talking about software development methodologies, he is talking about the role of people (mostly developers) in the software development process.

[hravnx]

If you think the software methodologies of Olden Times did not consider the role of people in the software development process you are mistaken.

They might seem archaic (and even wrong) when we look at them today, but still: smart people put a lot of thought into the methods, they were hotly debated among professionals, books were written, and consultants made money teaching and preaching them.

In other words, not that different from today.

[peripitea]

There have always been people who thought about how to make software development better, but there were far fewer of them, both in software and in management. Relative to what we have now, I think it's absolutely fair to say that there was almost no thought about it.

Even ten years ago I was convincing my co-workers and manager that we should be able to run our build without human intervention; today I would not believe you if you told me your team had that problem, let alone that people disagreed it was a problem.