Technology '84 the penetrating technologies: Am analysis by the experts: Taylor L. Booth on computers: Software is the limitation

In the mid-1980s the computer user is overwhelmed with available hardware. It is software, rather, that has become the limiting factor in computer applications. Each new application seems to specialized software, developed expressly to support it. Unfortunately, software development still resembles a cottage industry in which every new program is painstakingly constructed, strand by strand. The cost of developing the software for a given application is often 10 to 100 times greater than the cost of the hardware on which the software will run.