History
The history of software tools began with the first computers in the early 1950s that used linkers, loaders, and control programs. Tools became famous with Unix in the early 1970s with tools like grep, awk and make that were meant to be combined flexibly with pipes. The term "software tools" came from the book of the same name by Brian Kernighan and P. J. Plauger.
Tools were originally simple and light weight. As some tools have been maintained, they have been integrated into more powerful integrated development environments (IDEs). These environments consolidate functionality into one place, sometimes increasing simplicity and productivity, other times sacrificing flexibility and extensibility. The workflow of IDEs is routinely contrasted with alternative approaches, such as the use of Unix shell tools with text editors like Vim and Emacs.
The distinction between tools and applications is murky. For example, developers use simple databases (such as a file containing a list of important values) all the time as tools. However a full-blown database is usually thought of as an application in its own right.
For many years, computer-assisted software engineering (CASE) tools were sought after. Successful tools have proven elusive. In one sense, CASE tools emphasized design and architecture support, such as for UML. But the most successful of these tools are IDEs.
The ability to use a variety of tools productively is one hallmark of a skilled software engineer.
Read more about this topic: Development Tools
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.”
—Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)