Software crisis – the inability to create and manage complexity in designing, building and maintaining large software projects or systems, has been proving to be a drag on the fast and varied development of software projects and processes. The existing software engineering paradigm is analogous to civil engineering paradigm for constructing large buildings that does not use special kind of parts that can be assembled and disassembled.

Holder of six patents in the US, Mr. Chiluvuri has patented a software paradigm that is akin to electronic engineering paradigm, where each product is built by plugging-in components. This paradigm is five times more efficient, increases productivity by five folds and the quality of software by 20 folds, because 80% of software engineering is constantly redesigning each of the components individually. It also substantially reduces the skill set required, which is beneficial to countries like India having a large percent of young software engineering workforce. The discovery will greatly help in the next wave of Gold Rush technologies like Self-driving cars, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

Mr. Raju Chiluvuri was in Mumbai on his way to his home town Hyderabad when Silicon India met him for an exclusive interview.

The following are the important excerpts taken from the exclusive interview:

Ques.1: I must confess at the very outset, very honestly, that I'm finding it very hard to believe your path- breaking Invention...

Answer-1: It is a moral and ethical obligation of every scientist to investigate such evidence for advancing of knowledge of mankind

Ques2: In simple language, what is your definition of invention/discovery?

Ans-2: When flawed assumptions, no matter how many years old, are turned upside down to show the right path, it results in a new Discovery which can bring about a revolution in current thinking and practice.
The geocentric paradigm that assumed that the earth was static at centre, led to the accumulation of flawed assumptions for over 1800 years. Likewise, the Body of Knowledge for existing dominant software engineering paradigm has been acquired and gathered by relying on 60-years-old flawed assumptions about components and CBE (Component Based Engineering).

If the 2300-year-old lie hadn’t been exposed, all the great scientists born during past 400 years (e.g. Newton, Einstein, Bose, Max Planck, Bohr, Dirac or Maxwell) could not have made any tangible contribution, except may be exposing the error at the root of geocentric paradigm.

If the assumptions made 60 years ago about components and CBE are flawed, exposing the flawed assumptions results in software engineering revolution. I have conclusive proof and evidence to demonstrate that these assumptions at the very foundation of existing dominant software engineering paradigm are flawed.

Ques 3: To what extent and how will your discovery impact the next wave of gold rush technologies such as Self-driven cars, machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, to name a few?

Ans-3: The greatest engineering invention for increasing manual productivity was interchangeable components by Eli Whitney 200 years ago, which alone increased manual productivity and quality by 100 folds. The makers of products (sewing machines or clocks) had no problem employing the invention to create and use interchangeable components for mass-produce respective products. Our inventions are similar, and any product maker can employ them to build each product by building and assembling pluggable components.

The invention of interchangeable components transformed the fledgling nation USA from net importer of goods and IP to net exporter during mid-19th century surpassing Europe. However, in 21st century such inventions (that can give significant competitive advantage like ours) are copied and can be employed in weeks by any player worldwide, so the speed of adoption determines winners and losers.

Ques 4: What will be your discovery’s long-term effects?

Ans-4: We will be able to build many times more complex software than what is possible/ practical today and address problems that are hard to solve today. The benefit that will accrue to the software industry can be gauged from the 1995 US government’s figures:
US alone spent over $250 billion a year on developing IT applications. Of this amount,
• $81 billion spent on cancelled software
• 31% of projects failed to complete
• 53% of projects cost 189% over estimates
• Cost of bugs $59.5 billion to end users in 2000
• Worldwide lost-opportunity costs are not measurable, but could be in Trillions of dollars

Ques 5: Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread, is an old saying. You undertook research at a time when billions of dollars had been sunk in and world’s top software engineers had surrendered to the Software Crisis. Did you, even for a second, think that you would succeed where giants like Microsoft and IBM had failed?

Ans-5: Being a software engineer since 1988, I was also brainwashed to believe that the CRISIS is in the very nature of software. But I accidentally stumbled on to a fascinating kind of component when I was creating a library for GUI components for web applications in 1999-2001. This ignited in me an irresistible intellectual curiosity that drove me into focusing on this research 16 years ago.

You are right. It is foolish to take-up such endeavor that is perceived to be impossible, but simultaneously, it’s hard to resist when you stumble onto a very promising solution, particularly when you can afford to take up the research effort.