{{cita pubblicazione |quotes= |cognome=Dijkstra |nome=Edsger |linkautore= |coautori= |anno=1979 |mese= |titolo=The Humble Programmer |rivista=Classics in Software Engineering |editore=Yourdon Press |città= |volume= |numero= |pagine= |id= |pmid= |url=http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd03xx/EWD340.PDF |lingua=Inglese |accesso= |abstract= }}</ref>: {{Citazione|The major cause of the software crisis is that the machines have become several orders of magnitude more powerful! To put it quite bluntly: as long as there were no machines, programming was no problem at all; when we had a few weak computers, programming became a mild problem, and now we have gigantic computers, programming has become an equally gigantic problem| [[Edsger Dijkstra]], The Humble Programmer}}
Le cause della software crisis era collegate alla complessità dei processi software ed alla relativa immaturità dell'ingegneria del software. La crisi si manifestava in diversi modi:
