In ''Ecclesiastes'' (Authorised Version) the preacher tells us that:

	''ch1v9'':	...there is no new thing under the sun.

and asks:

	''ch1v10'':	Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

Yes there is. Software is that thing.

''Well, of course there was that thing with the little stones in the holes around Stonehenge circa Long Time Ago that turned out to be a program for keeping track of the seasons ...'' Isn't that application specific hardware?

At least my Genetic Programs are older than 'software', what some humans claim as having produced themselves alone. -- GodSmiling.
| God can smile all he likes, he's nothing but a phantom emergent property of the brain, and thus wrote nothing, not the least of which would be 'Genetic Programs'...

Software maintenance problems seem to be of old time: "And I detested all 
the fruits of my labor under the sun, because I must leave them to a man who 
is to come after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? 
Yet he will have control over all the fruits of my wise labor under the sun."
Eccl. 2:18-19

----
Macbeth was no stranger to debugging:

	Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
	To plague the inventor... 
	(Macbeth, Act 1, Scene VII)

--W. Shakespeare