I've done some diving down into other 50s/60s papers, and after a while you get a sense of "New Software Methods, Same As The Old". Fundamentals of software engineering have not changed since the 60s, but languages and problem contexts have.<p>It's a great experience reading on the old hackers, really gives you a sense of context.
As somebody (Jon Bentley? Gerald Weinberg?) says he was corrected, this was in fact very much not the way the Wright brothers worked. They had no degrees but they were very careful engineers.
The main point to me is we still insist on this being engineering as opposed to creative writing.<p>No-one sets out the specifications for a novel, or even
a marketing report.