The Mythical Man Month by Frederick P. Brooks

Author:Frederick P. Brooks
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Addison-Wesley

16

No Silver Bullet-Essence and Accident in Software Engineering

16

No Silver Bullet-Essence and Accident in Software Engineering

There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity.

The Werewolf of Eschenbach, Germany: line engraving, 1685.

Courtesy of The Grainger Collection, New York.

Abstract1

All software construction involves essential tasks, the fashioning of the complex conceptual structures that compose the abstract software entity, and accidental tasks, the representation of these abstract entities in programming languages and the mapping of these onto machine languages within space and speed constraints. Most of the big past gains in software productivity have come from removing artificial barriers that have made the accidental tasks inordinately hard, such as severe hardware constraints, awkward programming languages, lack of machine time. How much of what software engineers now do is still devoted to the accidental, as opposed to the essential? Unless it is more than 9/10 of all effort, shrinking all the accidental activities to zero time will not give an order of magnitude improvement.

Therefore it appears that the time has come to address the essential parts of the software task, those concerned with fashioning abstract conceptual structures of great complexity. I suggest:

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