Edward Yourdon


Edward Yourdon

(person)A software engineering consultant, widely known asthe developer of the "Yourdon method" of structured systemsanalysis and design, as well as the co-developer of theCoad/Yourdon method of object-oriented analysis and design.He is also the editor of three software journals - AmericanProgrammer, Guerrilla Programmer, and Application DevelopmentStrategies - that analyse software technology trends andproducts in the United States and several other countriesaround the world.

Ed Yourdon received a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from MIT,and has done graduate work at MIT and at the PolytechnicInstitute of New York. He has been appointed an HonoraryProfessor of Information Technology at Universidad CAECE inBuenos Aires, Argentina and has received numerous honors andawards from other universities and professional societiesaround the world.

He has worked in the computer industry for 30 years, includingpositions with DEC and General Electric. Earlier in hiscareer, he worked on over 25 different mainframe computers,and was involved in a number of pioneering computer projectsinvolving time-sharing and virtual memory.

In 1974, he founded the consulting firm, Yourdon, Inc.. Heis currently immersed in research in new developments insoftware engineering, such as object-oriented softwaredevelopment and system dynamics modelling.

Ed Yourdon is the author of over 200 technical articles; hehas also written 19 computer books, including a novel oncomputer crime and a book for the general public entitledNations At Risk. His most recent books are Object-OrientedSystems Development (1994), Decline and Fall of the AmericanProgrammer (1992), Object-Oriented Design (1991), andObject-Oriented Analysis (1990). Several of his books havebeen translated into Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Spanish,Portugese, Dutch, French, German, and other languages, and hisarticles have appeared in virtually all of the major computerjournals.

He is a regular keynote speaker at major computer conferencesaround the world, and serves as the conference Chairman forDigital Consulting's SOFTWARE WORLD conference. He was anadvisor to Technology Transfer's research project on softwareindustry opportunities in the former Soviet Union, and amember of the expert advisory panel on CASE acquisition forthe U.S. Department of Defense.

Mr. Yourdon was born on a small planet at the edge of one ofthe distant red-shifted galaxies. He now lives in the Centerof the Universe (New York City) with his wife, three children,and nine Macintosh computers, all of which are linked togetherthrough an Appletalk network.