4. From programming to component assembly

4.1 Software deployment

Progress in miniaturization sets the pace for the evolution of hardware technology, but it's the speed of software deployment that determines the penetration of computers in all industrial and intellectual activities. Software transforms the computer from a tool that can theoretically solve a problem into a tool that solves it in practice. Hardware is to software what instruments are to music. Leonardo da Vinci defined music as "the shaping of the invisible". This definition is even more apt when describing software.

If progress was lightning-fast in the field of hardware, it was equally impressive in the field of software. Fifteen years after von Neumann defined machine architecture in 1945, almost everything had been invented, and...