The 2005 AOSD conference was hosted in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States, from March 14–18. The event's general chair was Mira Mezini; the program chair was Peri Tarr.
The conference was significant for its many revelations and insights on AOSD. Notable among the deliveries was the keynote speech by one of the two keynote speakers — Grady Booch, IBM Fellow. His speech caught the audience's attention in the way, and the manner, it was presented.
The keynoteThe Complexity Of Programming Models
Grady Booch
Keynote speaker · IBM FellowAs Grady Booch stepped on stage, the question he asked was: "How many lines of code are written each year?" The answer — about 35 billion each year, from roughly 15 million software developers.
In his view, the common trend observed is that things get ever more complex as the years go by. A particular system means different things to different individuals — and simplicity, too, has different views.
Grady Booch pointed out clearly that in the midst of complexity, ensuring simplicity in one aspect of a system is realised by trading off complexity elsewhere.
Grady also established that a program is structured by a great many design decisions from different stakeholders, all working to create a balance among the forces hovering around the system. Essential complexity can be mastered, but we cannot do away with it entirely. He stressed that if we are not knowledgeable enough to measure complexity, it is equally reasonable to say we cannot measure simplicity either. And it should be stated: a working complex system evolves from a system that was simple — and known to have worked.
A complex system designed from scratch is seen to never work — and the fundamentals will not go out of fashion and style.Grady Booch, AOSD 2005
These were the insightful notes Grady Booch offered to enlighten the audience on the trends and developments in software development.