Grady Booch, IBM Chief Scientist for software engineering and well-known software design and architecture expert, is going to create a TV series on computing. He and his wife Jan Booch are planning to produce 11 episodes with the objective to educate “audiences of all ages in the story of the technology that has changed humanity.”
Grady Booch invented the Booch method for software design and has been one of the famous “three amigos” (Booch, Rumbaugh, Jacobsen) responsible for creating Unified Modeling Language (UML). His methodology also had a huge impact on the Rational Unified Process. Later he acted as one of the proponents of the pattern community. In the time when Booch became IBM Chief Scientist for software engineering he also started efforts to write a Handbook of Software Architecture which is still an ongoing project.
The goal of his new project “Computing – The Human Experience” is to create a documentary on computing. As the project web site mentions:
Computing will explain the essential science of computing, present the stories of the people, events and inventions of computing, examine the connections among computing, science, and society, contemplate the future. … In the spirit of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Computing will inform, inspire, entertain. Computing is neither a lecture, nor a textbook, nor a dramatic recreation. It’s an exploration and a conversation between the viewer and one of the industry’s luminaries, delivered with wit, depth, and provocation.
Among the advisory board of the project are famous persons from the computing community such as Vint Cerf, Alan Kay, Tim O’Reilly, and Mary Shaw.
The initial costs of US $ 25.000 for advertising the project are covered by sponsors from the computing community. Booch is providing a Web site at kickstarter.com for that purpose. After the money has been collected, he promises to create a trailer by which he would like to address “the appropriate movers and shakers – as well as the general public” to collect the production costs.
How is all of that related to architects and developers? There currently seems to be a large gap between computing professionals and all those acting as pure users. A TV series could make IT laymen better understand the work of IT experts. The social side of software engineering seems to be commonly neglected.
Readers interested in more information about the project or want to become one of the sponsors may visit the project web site.
What it is your take on this endeavor?