There’s a good chance you have read something by Edward Yourdon, especially if you were interested in emerging IT problems and trends.

Yourdon, who died Jan. 20 of complications from a blood infection, was a computer consultant and an expert on software engineering principles. He was noted, in particular, for his work on structured programming methodologies and authored or co-authored more than two dozen books, hundreds of technical articles and many columns for Computerworld.

Inducted into the Computer Hall of Fame in 1997, he was 71.

Yourdon’s interests and impacts were wide-ranging. Notably, at a time when few even thought about offshore outsourcing and the movement of programming jobs overseas, Yourdon’s 1993 book, The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer, offered an early warning about how such a job shift might happen.

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