Chapter Two. Military History

Military history is an essential means of retaining the experience of past battles and imparting it to recruits and less experienced soldiers. Military historians incorporate various sources of historical documentation including reference books, interviews with military leaders and planners, and scientific analyses of artifacts recovered from battlefields. A thorough study of past battlefields provides valuable insight into strategies and tactics that can be brought to bear in modern situations. Army leaders, commanders, and soldiers can all benefit from learning from the experience of their predecessors.

"Those that forget the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them."

-George Santayana

For a fairly youthful industry, there is a deep history of significant developments in the software industry. From the Computer-Assisted Software Engineering techniques of the early 1980s to the various artificial intelligence movements including rule bases and fuzzy logic to the more recent uses of scripting languages and application server development techniques, there is something that can be applied to the software development practices of today.