The last 10 percent

Following a brief summary of the background and goals of developments in software engineering, some of the major thrusts in the future of program development and maintenance are discussed. Various national level software initiatives are discussed in this context. This is not a comparative survey of their plans and activities. The central issues addressed relate to the understandability of programming, the reuse of software, and the general problem of working with and improving a program that is already almost the one desired. This is the phase of the process after the system is `90% done', hence the emphasis on the `last 10 percent'.