Introduction
This document explores anecdotes on cycle time in computing over the past 40 years. We conclude that progressive delivery is now the driver for future cycle time improvements.
Anecdotes Over the Years
Battleship
As a high school student in the late 1970s, I joined a mathematics club at a local university that sponsored a monthly competition. Each team would write a program in Fortran to play the game of Battleship. (I believe that the game is still sold as a board game.) It was my first experience with Fortran, and only my second year doing programming of any type. Like many people coming into the computing industry now, I was self-taught.
The competition was simple. Each pair of teams would compete. The teams would be scored based on how quickly they landed hits on opposing teams ships, with a bonus given to the winner. On each round, your computer player would be given the known state of your opponents board and your opponents last move. On your turn, you would simply provide the coordinates on a 10 by 10 grid of where to strike.
Here is the rub. The competition was monthly over a 5 month period. There was no opportunity to practice or play the game between competitions. And your player had to be submitted in the form of punch cards!
The cycle time was ~30 days between getting any feedback at all, whether it be on syntax, strategy, or performance.