The Divine Software Engineering Comedy -- Inferno: The Okinawa Files

2025-10-28

AI Summary

This paper identifies a systemic crisis in software engineering: rampant empiricism among practitioners, rapid obsolescence of historical lessons due to accelerated iteration, and cognitive overload induced by technological proliferation. Methodologically, it departs from conventional technical approaches by integrating interdisciplinary tools—workshop ethnography, sociological analysis, and philosophical critique—deployed through literary narrative and ironic rhetoric to deconstruct prevailing industry discourse. Its principal contributions are twofold: first, the original analytical framework “The Triple Nightmare of the Future,” which diagnoses the erosion of epistemic and ontological foundations amid hyper-accelerated development; second, a normative call to reconstitute engineering rationality through humanistic reflection, thereby advancing a historically conscious, sustainable paradigm for the discipline. The work offers both methodological innovation and conceptual grounding for meta-level inquiry into software engineering’s epistemological and sociotechnical evolution.

Technology Category

• Search and Optimization: Metareasoning and Metaheuristics
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Knowledge Engineering
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Other Foundations of Cognitive Modeling & Systems

Application Category

• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Models for Web evolution
• Social Networks and Social Media: Socio-technical web-based systems
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Sustainability of Web economics

Abstract

In June 2024 I co-organized the FUture of Software Engineering symposium in Okinawa, Japan. Me, Andrian Marcus, Takashi Kobayashi and Shinpei Hayashi were general chairs, Nicole Novielli, Kevin Moran, Yutaro Kashiwa and Masanari Kondo were program chairs, some members of my group, Carmen Armenti, Stefano Campanella, Roberto Minelli, were the tables, can't have a room with only chairs, after all. We invited a crowd of people to discuss what future software engineering has. FUSE became a 3-day marathon on whether there is actually a future at all for SE. This essay is a slightly dark take about what I saw at that event, very loosely based on the discussions that took place, adding some healthy sarcasm and cynicism, the intellectual salt and pepper I never seem to run out of. I listened to the brilliant people who gathered to talk about where we're headed, and distilled three nightmares headed in our direction: software makers who don't know what they're doing, but get the job done anyway, a field moving so fast it can't remember its own lessons, and technologies multiplying like rabbits in Spring. So, let's start. The future, eh? The future of software engineering looks like a car crash in slow motion: you can see it coming but you can't look away. The thing is...

Problem

• Software makers lack knowledge but still complete projects
• The field evolves too rapidly to retain lessons learned
• Technologies proliferate uncontrollably like springtime rabbits

Innovation

• Organized symposium to discuss software engineering future
• Identified three key challenges in software development
• Used sarcastic narrative to critique current trends