Edward Yourdon

(person)

Edward Yourdon - A software engineering consultant, widely known as the developer of the "Yourdon method" of structured systems analysis and design, as well as the co-developer of the Coad/Yourdon method of object-oriented analysis and design. He is also the editor of three software journals - American Programmer, Guerrilla Programmer, and Application Development Strategies - that analyse software technology trends and products in the United States and several other countries around the world. Ed Yourdon received a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from MIT, and has done graduate work at MIT and at the Polytechnic Institute of New York. He has been appointed an Honorary Professor of Information Technology at Universidad CAECE in Buenos Aires, Argentina and has received numerous honors and awards from other universities and professional societies around the world. He has worked in the computer industry for 30 years, including positions with DEC and General Electric. Earlier in his career, he worked on over 25 different mainframe computers, and was involved in a number of pioneering computer projects involving time-sharing and virtual memory. In 1974, he founded the consulting firm, Yourdon, Inc.. He is currently immersed in research in new developments in software engineering, such as object-oriented software development and system dynamics modelling. Ed Yourdon is the author of over 200 technical articles; he has also written 19 computer books, including a novel on computer crime and a book for the general public entitled Nations At Risk. His most recent books are Object-Oriented Systems Development (1994), Decline and Fall of the American Programmer (1992), Object-Oriented Design (1991), and Object-Oriented Analysis (1990). Several of his books have been translated into Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Portugese, Dutch, French, German, and other languages, and his articles have appeared in virtually all of the major computer journals. He is a regular keynote speaker at major computer conferences around the world, and serves as the conference Chairman for Digital Consulting's SOFTWARE WORLD conference. He was an advisor to Technology Transfer's research project on software industry opportunities in the former Soviet Union, and a member of the expert advisory panel on CASE acquisition for the U.S. Department of Defense. Mr. Yourdon was born on a small planet at the edge of one of the distant red-shifted galaxies. He now lives in the Center of the Universe (New York City) with his wife, three children, and nine Macintosh computers, all of which are linked together through an Appletalk network.