History: clarify significance of IBM 360

[amyjko]

While I gained some new knowledge by reading the “History” chapter, I felt that the paragraph that introduces the IBM 360 needs to be better explained. The paragraph before that, which discusses how the birth of software engineering came about, was understandable in that it clearly explains how programmers began to solve “problems that didn’t have existing solutions, or were new ideas entirely.” When the IBM 360 is first mentioned, the paragraph explains how it was a project that allowed “software to actually perform” and that “there were multiple people working on multiple components, all which interacted with one another.” However, until I went on Google, I wasn’t able to really understand the large-scale impact the IBM 360 had in the area of computing, how exactly it worked, and the different roles people played when it came to the various components. That same paragraph talks about how programmers and academics would discuss the challenges they were facing at meets and conferences, especially if they were working on something big. Nonetheless, I wasn’t able to take away what kind of projects they were working on, what challenges they went through, or if there was a connection to the IBM 360 in any way since they were in the same paragraph.