Neil Douek Coming 2026

MANUSCRIPT PREVIEW

A Brief History of Engineering

This is an extraordinary moment. Technology is transforming faster than we ever imagined possible. The machines around us, once passive and literal, have become intelligent partners that shape the fabric of our lives. How did software engineering evolve from painstaking manual labour into a creative partnership between humans and machines? And what comes next, as the horizon of possibility keeps expanding? This new book traces a Golden Age of Software, 1950 to 2050, through three archetypes:

Archetype One
Trailblazers of Space and Mainframe
Archetype Two
Rockstars of the Internet and Cloud
Archetype Three
The Artificial Engineers

INSIDE THE MANUSCRIPT

COMING 2026

An arc of innovation: 1950 TO 2050

1950 to 2050. Punch cards, mission control, the open web, and cloud scale. Then a turning point: AI becomes a collaborator. Each era is mapped through its people, tools, and turning points.

Highlights

  • Reliability under constraint: the discipline that made software safe
  • Scale through openness: the operating model that delivered to billions
  • Beyond the cognitive wall: intent, agents, and sustainable acceleration