A Review on Software Industry in the Gulf Region

Abstract

After the software business stopped to be an art and became an engineering business it joined other existing industries and, therefore, it started to have rules, bylaws, quality measurements, reference books and other constraints. Programmers used to have their individual views and personal designs. Program variables, functions, and even data stores (databases) were used to serve a single vertical application. As time passed this type of freedom started to vanish gradually, and people started to form software teams and more complications came about, like using public services where individualities cannot exist. Therefore, programmers started to be more and more constrained.

After the software business became an industry on its own, issues like ethics, copyrights, quality, quality measurements and bylaws started to arise. On the other hand, software engineering experts started to write guidelines to describe how this industry should be practiced. Like all other industries in the world these issues are not comprehensively applied due to several reasons, like, for example lack of competition, lack of expertise and lack of bylaws. In this article I try to shed some light on the software industry in the Gulf region.