Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering 424
| Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering | |
| author | Robert L. Glass |
| pages | 190 |
| publisher | Addison-Wesley |
| rating | 8 out of 10 |
| reviewer | Sarusa |
| ISBN | 0321117425 |
| summary | 40 years of software engineering research in a nutshell. |
The Layout
Facts and Fallacies is not a technically demanding book; it's a very easy and compelling read. There are 55 Facts (and 5+5 fallacies) grouped into logical sections such as Management, Life Cycle, and Quality.
First, each Fact is stated succinctly. (For instance, Fact 1: The most important factor in software work is not the tools or techniques used by the programmers, but rather the quality of the programmers themselves.) Then the point is fleshed out more fully -- in this case, that even with all the periodic hype for some hot new methodology that promises orders of magnitude greater productivity, the quality of your programmers matters far more than anything else (and even the best new methods only offer 5-35% increases).
Next, the level of controversy about this Fact is discussed. For Fact 1, it's that even though everyone pays lip service to the idea of people being more important than processes, we all still act like it's not true. Maybe this new hot methodology can turn all your lousy programmers into great ones! Perhaps it's because people are a harder problem to address than tools, techniques, and process. And, of course, hot new methodologies sell a lot of books.
Finally comes a list of sources and references, which can lead you to more in-depth great reading like Peopleware and Software Runaways. This all works out to about one to two pages per item.
The Facts and Fallacies
The Facts and Fallacies fall into several groups. Some are not well known (or just met with stunned disbelief) such as Fact 31: Error removal is the most time-consuming phase of the life cycle. Some that are pretty well accepted, but are mostly ignored, like Fact 1 above. Some that are accepted, but nobody can agree on what to do about (if anything), like Fact 9 (paraphrased) #150: Project estimates are done at the beginning of the project when you have insufficient understanding of the requirements and scope, which makes it a very bad time to do an estimate for the entire project.
Some Facts Glass acknowledges many people will flat out disagree with (and for a few people, very loudly), like Fact 30: COBOL is a very bad language, but all the others (for business data processing) are so much worse. These are the Facts where he really has an axe to grind, and make for amusing reading. In this case what he's really saying is that there is a use for domain-specific languages intended to do one specific thing and do it well, rather than languages like C and Java which attempt to be "good enough" for any use under the sun. But everyone hates COBOL, including me, so it's controversial.
What's Good?
Again, this is a good (and fast) Read. Even if you don't agree with everything, Glass is a skilled writer with strong opinions and a sense of humor. And you might end up agreeing more than you expected. I was pretty skeptical when I started reading. After all, I'm a long time software engineer with strong opinions too, and how often do you get opinionated geeks to agree on even what soda or text editor to use? But most of the Facts resonated with my experience, and of course for most of them Glass has substantial research reference for. The best Facts are those that you knew but might never have expressed explicitly, like Fact 41: Maintenance typically consumes 40 to 80 percent (average, 60 percent) of software costs. Therefore, it is probably the most important life cycle phase of software.
Or consider Fact 18: There are two 'rules of three' in reuse: (a) it is three times as difficult to build reusable components as single use components, and (b) a reusable component should be tried out in three different applications before it will be sufficiently general to accept into a reuse library. I knew this generally, and you probably did too, but I didn't know the specific reference for "Biggerstaff's Rules of Three," which give you a ballpark figure.
The book was written in 2002, when eXtreme Programming was hot, and it's very interesting that the predictions Glass made in this book about the strengths and weaknesses of XP were, in retrospect, pretty much on target, and this sort of predictive success helps confirm more viscerally that he knows his subject.
What's Bad?
There are a few Facts in here that Glass included just because he feels strongly about them (or even about specific people) and he doesn't really back them up very strongly except with "well golly, this is so obvious." Like Fallacy 5: Programming can and should be egoless. Note that this is a Fallacy, so he opposes it. I happen to agree with him, but his arguments are mostly personal ox-goring even if they're based on his extensive experience. Still, it's an interesting read.
A few of the Fallacies he feels are so obvious that he doesn't even really bother providing sources or references for them, and this somewhat diminishes the overall feel of rigor.
Really, the worst thing about this book is that it doesn't come with a poster of just a bullet-pointed list of facts and fallacies that you can nail to your office wall (or your boss's).
A Few More Facts
Just to whet your appetite:
Fact 21: For every 25% increase in problem complexity, there is a 100% increase in solution complexity.
Fact 37: Rigorous inspections [code reviews] can remove up to 90% of errors before the first test case is run. [But are so mentally and emotionally exhausting that we rarely do them.]
Fallacy 10: You teach people how to program by showing them how to write programs. Why don't we teach them to read programs first? Good question (and he has a few possible answers).
In Conclusion
I wouldn't say this Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering is quite as powerful as The Mythical Man Month, Peopleware or Death March on their own, but if you program (or manage programmers) and want to be more than just a code pig, this will give you the condensed version of 40 years of research in a very readable package. Even if you don't agree with everything he says, it's well worth considering it.
You can purchase Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
As long as he is not management, he's fine by me.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Dear Veteran: I Salute thee for resisting the pressures of becoming another me-too manager and instead staying in trenches to fight with poor soldiers.
Re:As long as he is not management, he's fine by m (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As long as he is not management, he's fine by m (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the big problem with management. Pre-boom managers were PHBs, and thus promote PHBs. New skilled IT people look at PHBs and think, I don't want to be like that, so I won't become a manager.
So its a self-feeding cycle.
WE NEED MORE GEEKS IN MANAGEMENT.
Right now, I should be writing my MBA assignment, worth 25% of the subject, due in at midnight tommorrow, but instead I'm procrastinating on SlashDot. If that doesn't qualify me to be a geek manager, I don't know what does.
Re:As long as he is not management, he's fine by m (Score:3, Insightful)
Our management here has been propogated through golf buddies and drinking buddies. Those with the experience to make good decisions for the organization a
Re:As long as he is not management, he's fine by m (Score:4, Insightful)
Attain some social skills, go out and play some golf and buy the boss a beer.
Noone wants to work with arrogant anti-social types, management included.
Re:As long as he is not management, he's fine by m (Score:4, Funny)
One day you'll be driving by fry's and realize you've not been there in over three months, and you will feel very small indeed.
Geeks are good at what they do when they embrace their geekness. When they try to suppress it, they become miserable, depressed creatures. And i would not want that in managament.
I say: stay behind the keyboard, and long live sandals!
Re:As long as he is not management, he's fine by m (Score:3, Insightful)
In a hundred years we will have software that does what a manager does today. But man will always need geeks. Yes, what is complex today is simple tomarrow. But tomarrow there will new complex problems to solve!
Re:As long as he is not management, he's fine by m (Score:5, Insightful)
Some are poorly organized in everything but their code (*ahem*.) A few grew up believing that an employee / employer relationship should be antagonistic; that a manager must rule their team with an iron fist. That may come from looking around at a bunch of us slacker programmers thinking "hey, why aren't they working as hard as I? If I were their manager, I'd be busting their asses 24 by 7." Many are extremely introverted and have trouble speaking up among their peers; they simply would not be capable of dressing down an employee who desperately needs it.
In most of these cases it seems that the programmers have spent their time learning machine management skills. Those skills are completely unhelpful when it comes to working with people. The lessons you learn (for example, "the machine only does exactly what I tell it") don't work with human employees, no matter how hard you try to apply them.
Yes, management is a skill that can be learned, but I don't know any geeks that would want to spend the time, let alone actually manage. Not even for the money. Almost all the people I know who have become successful managers have never been real programmers. They were business analysts or came from completely outside the IT field.
Re:As long as he is not management, he's fine by m (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep. My experience of fellow computer programmers is the same. They would not make good managers. And, more importantly, they would not ENJOY being managers. They are perfectly content to be managees.
However, the few programmers who are both capable and motivated to be in management really should aspire to do so, IMAO. They are exactly the sort of management that the industry nee
Re:As long as he is not management, he's fine by m (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As long as he is not management, he's fine by m (Score:5, Insightful)
Management is not harder than coding per se. It is just harder for geeks whose talents and interests are more suited for coding. Most managers don't want to code, because for them it is HARDER than managing.
Re:As long as he is not management, he's fine by m (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a manager of a large department. I didn't ask to be promoted -- it was thrust upon me. Managing is 30% more work for 10% more pay. I stick with it mostly because it looks good on a resume. The most frustrating
If all managers are PHBs... (Score:3, Insightful)
And you wouldnt want THAT. It would spoil the cool "old soldier" metaphor...
Re:As long as he is not management, he's fine by m (Score:5, Funny)
Ahhhh... (Score:2, Funny)
I resent that (Score:3, Funny)
I resent that. As we all know, the correct term is r as in coder.
"experienced, cranky, opinionated old coot" (Score:5, Funny)
You could have shortened that to "experienced"; the rest follows naturally from that.
Another review... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mike's review is from the "agile software" point of view, so he comments favorably on (among others) Fact 22 - "Eighty percent of software work is intellectual. A fair amount of it is creative. Little of it is clerical".
Re:Another review... (Score:2)
COBOL (Score:2, Interesting)
COBOL && Lisp? (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's assume that the book's thesis is true that COBOL is best for administrative programming since it's a specialised language.
Does the book address e.g. Lisp, where programmers have a standard "pattern" to create sub-languages to attack problems?
It sounds like an argument that Lisp should be used instead of COBOL, since Lisp is arguably at least as good as any/most for non-low level programming.
Now I'll probably be flamed by Lisp people... :-)
Re:COBOL && Lisp? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:COBOL (Score:3, Informative)
Modern COBOLs are a far cry from the original language. Some even have OO features. While the thought of using traditional COBOL file management makes me cringe too, nowadays you can use SQL or call out to an ODBC driver. Probably the best fe
Deadlines (Score:3, Insightful)
Another important factor is the amount of time that they are given to accomplish the task. Certain programmers, including many who are otherwise excellent, procrastinate and cannot meet deadlines. And, as we're aware, even good programmers often take shortcuts once fatigue begins to set in.
the deadline issue (Score:4, Insightful)
If the manager imposes an impossible deadline to the programmer, hes just a bad boss, PHB style. Of course, there are always real world time constraints to be met, but in this case the manager should define a possible goal along with the programmer, alternative solutions, scope agreements, etc.
On the other hand, if the programmer is incapable of defining a deadline himself to a well defined amount of work, than you just cant blame the manager.
Re:Deadlines (Score:3, Interesting)
1. The obvious, they are not a great programmer after all.
2. You mention fatigue. You're dead on. Being tired can sap someone's efficiency (including via increasing the number of bugs) a lot. Whipping a team into working 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week, may work for a week, maybe even two, but then you have tired _and_ demoralized people.
3. Morale problems. Being
Fact 37 - code reviews catch errors (Score:5, Informative)
> can remove up to 90% of errors before the
> first test case is run. [But are so mentally
> and emotionally exhausting that we
> rarely do them.]
I think some of these terms mean different things to different people. When he says "test case", he means (I think) a tester clicking around a UI and adding a new employee or whatever. But "test case" can also mean a unit test, i.e.:The latter meaning of unit test provides a way to do "rigorous inspections" over and over - because a computer is doing the work. Good times.
Re:Fact 37 - code reviews catch errors (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as an example off the top of my head, it's common to write
which in some languages could be caught by the compiler, but not always. The author of that line can read it over and over but something in his brain will replace the mistaken '=' with '=='. The code reviewer has no such preconceptions and will (might) see it immediately.One good example of open review is the Mozilla project, where all commits must be reviewed by at least two people, at least one of whom must be the owner of the relevant subtree of the project. (sorry if this is not quite right, i'm going from memory here). As a result the quality of the code making it into the Mozilla tree is pretty high, with minimum "paper bag" errors.
Re:Fact 37 - code reviews catch errors (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fact 37 - code reviews catch errors (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing compares to a code review done by a super-anal type who nitpicks over everything. It is amazing what such a person can catch in terms of weird edge cases, inefficiencies, and so forth, simply by making you sit there and justify what you've done. Like the reviewer said, they are emotionally draining, but are truly worth it.
Re:Fact 37 - code reviews catch errors (Score:5, Insightful)
Hm. Maybe that super-anal person could fill the missing test cases for all those edge conditions. Then his analness will be preserved for posterity, because everyone can run those test cases to catch possible bugs in future code changes.
Re:Fact 37 - code reviews catch errors (Score:3, Insightful)
The other major advantage of code reviews is that you know someone else is going to look at your code soon. You're less likely to try to slip something trashy that works through.
Re:Fact 37 - code reviews catch errors (Score:3, Informative)
This is hardly "needless to say". You'll have to justify it if you're going to get me to believe it; I don't have data (so I'm vulnerable to any studies you post), but you'll have to at least counteract these reasons:
Re:Fact 37 - code reviews catch errors (Score:2)
It's not fun, but I think that's why they call it work. Of course, if the senior developer is checking lines of code for naming conventions and the like, then it's a waste of time.
Unit testing is a good idea, but if the same developer is writing the product code and the unit test, why should you believe that his product code is bad
COBOL (Score:3, Insightful)
COBOL is an old language, not necessarily a bad language. Like anything else, you get out of it what you put into it. If you like programming in COBOL then you'll probably be good at it. If you like programming in Java, then you'll probably be able to code any business data processing functionality you need in it too. I think it's best to use the tool you're most comfortable with.
Re:COBOL (Score:4, Funny)
COBOL was designed not to actually get work done, but rather to destroy the ego of any young, up-and-coming prima donnas.
After the first year of debugging and maintaining COBOL programs with millions of lines of spaghetti code, obfuscated, global variables, etc... the young programmer has no room left for an ego. He has come to the realization that he can't understand everything about the system completely; he is humbled.
Then, when given a Java assignment, he feels a sense of gratitude and loyalty to his boss, who has just lifted him from an endless quagmire of PERFORMS and GO BACKS, and SOC4 ABEND...
THAT is why COBOL came about. IBM never expected that business would build systems with a language designed to break-in the new hires...
But, as they say, the rest is history...
Re:COBOL (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:COBOL (Score:3, Interesting)
Flow control like PERFORM, no good way to set up storage classes, akward syntax, horrible verbosity are just a few things.
Setting up linkage sections is a pain in the ass. It is no wonder Cobol programers hated calling subroutines. What is worse is the spagetti code they rouintly wrote and then painfully debugged.
There is a language that is quite good as a repl
So COBOL is like Capitalism... (Score:4, Funny)
"Fact", but still irrelevant (Score:4, Insightful)
If a code review, which takes several hours of my time and the time of my fellow developers, can catch 90% of the errors before the first test case is run, or I can catch 90% of the errors (not necessarily the same ones) using the test cases, it's a better use of resources to let the computer point the errors out to me.
A code review on "90% debugged" software that finds an error strikes me as more useful than a code review that finds several errors in 0% debugged software.
As for fact #1, good process or tools may not be able to make all programmers gods, but bad process or tools can make a mortal out of anyone.
Re:"Fact", but still irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
It is emperical that people tend to overlook errors in their own work. Hence, the reviewing by others.
I don't think he's talking about compilation errors, so the computer can't always find the (business logic) errors.
Re:"Fact", but still irrelevant (Score:2)
Reading your own code. (Score:5, Insightful)
After writing out a couple hundred lines of code, print it out. Then come in the next day and read it. I mean, truly read it, line by line.
Some may argue that this is not as good other programmers reading the code. Undoubtedly true, but you will still catch many errors. The fact that you've waited a day means you are, in a sense, a different programmer than the one that wrote the code. And the fact that it's printed rather than on the screen gives you a different perspective.
I suggest that running tests is not sufficient to ensure a reasonable level of quality. There are certain errors that are unlikely to be caught by testing, and yet are quite obvious in a read through.
In other word, testing is not a replacement for read throughs. In finding problems, a multi-faceted approach is needed.
Change font type and size... (Score:3, Informative)
The aim of printing or reformating is to change the text, and force you to actually read the letters that are on the page. This is done by destroying the patterns in the positioning of the text that the writer is used to, thereby hindering recall.
This is one of the reasons LaTeX is useful (for me, at any rate), because
And use a grinder (Score:3, Informative)
Which is what we used to call pretty-printers when they did more than just wrap everything in font tags.
My favorite was lgrind, which produced TeX/LaTeX versions of your source. It could be taught about variable naming patterns, so if your code does something like "delta_vn = blah", it would emit "\delta_{vn} = blah". When printed, this becomes an actual Greek delta character, with the "vn" as a subscript. (Just one example.)
Checking the formula in the code against the formula in the math reference
Re:Reading your own code. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Fact", but still irrelevant (Score:4, Insightful)
Now it doesn't cost real money but has an implied cost that bugs found later in the development process cost more money to fix than if you found then in the coding phase at a code review. Never mind the fact that the recommended rates of code inspects in lines of code per hour are near glacial and costs more money now to have 4 highly paid people to sit in a room and read code out loud. One project I worked on was all brand new code and would have taken three full months of code reviews to review every single piece of code at the speed the QA people were insisting was required for a proper code inspection.
The process also insisted that we code inspect before we began any testing. So instead of running a suite of tests that could test 90% of the code in a matter of minutes, the QA insisted that we go through a code inspection before test just because the QA people's definitive texts on software quality still use the same data that Fagan used from his research back in the 1970s. They can quote the facts but they don't understand what assumptions were in the original research.
Code inspections do have their place. I would say those places are to enforce coding standards and knowledge transfer which both help with maintainability in the long term. In reality however, most of the code I inspect today has been pounded on for a month or so before we review it. I can't remember the last time I actually found an error through inspection that would have resulted in a bug report. Most of the stuff we find are missing documentation and typos in that documentation. *yawn*
Re:"Fact", but still irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
Two reasons (there are more, but these are the best ones that come to mind immediately):
(1) The next time you park yourself on a commercial airliner you can be thankful that the software controlling the engines, the autopilot and the cabin pressure controls, to name just a few subsystems, was revie
Re:"Fact", but still irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
who's smarter?
test cases are a great way to ensure that your code continues to do what it's intended to do. code reviews can catch design errors [though the ego factor is problematic here], can lead to new ideas, can dramatically simplify algorithms, etc.
ITS GOOD WHEN THE PROGRAMMERS TALK ABOUT THE CODE EVERY ONE IN A WHILE!
a free side benefit of r
Not at all. (Score:3, Insightful)
That may be what your intuition tells you, but you're wrong. That is the most expensive way to debug software.
When you find a defect in code inspect, you have your finger on it. You know exactly which line of code is faulty, and you know how it is faulty. Fixing it is trivial.
When you find a defect in unit test, you know which subsystem is at
Re:what is the best use of resources, then? (Score:3, Insightful)
Fact 21 Addendum (Score:5, Funny)
Addendum: Unless you are talking about a Microsoft product where for every 1 % increase in problem complexity, there is a 7 year delay in solution delivery.
Book Club (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, our suggestions didn't really get anywhere as a Massive Reorganization (TM) of the department took place. *grumble*
We're thinking of doing another Book Club, talking about the "Dynamics of Software Development" by Jim McCarthy.
Re:Book Club (Score:4, Funny)
We had a Fight Club at my job, but I'm not allowed to talk about it.
Fact 41 - maintenance (Score:4, Insightful)
> 40 to 80 percent (average, 60 percent)
> of software costs. Therefore, it is probably
> the most important life cycle phase of software.
Hm. This is a tricky one. Does maintenance take that big a chunk because of the way we write v1.0? Maybe we can improve our initial code to make subsequent changes easier. And build in a safety net of units tests to make those changes less painful.
A lot of maintenance may be a good sign - it may mean that the program is being evolved and improved and is actually useful to someone. Dead programs and cancelled projects don't get maintained, but that's not a point in their favor.
Egoless Programming (Score:5, Insightful)
I have worked with somebody who turned himself into a great programmer by being egoless. He could solve any problem by the simple expedient of not trying to do it all himself and being very good at accepting ideas from other people. In most circumstances programming is done within a team and ego just gets in the way.
Who wants to work with somebody who rejects an idea just because they didn't think of it!!.
Re:Egoless Programming (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Egoless Programming (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Egoless Programming (Score:2)
Re:Egoless Programming (Score:5, Interesting)
The main reason programmers appear to have an ego about their work is that as you get older and more experienced you're expected to know more about software engineering than the people younger or less experienced than you. Never mind that you've never worked with Package X, you are a senior guy and you can handle it. They also have their junior people lean on you and then their success depends on yours.
If you appear egoless and unashamed to draw from others' advice, you appear to be ignorant and unmotivated once you get to be a certain age or get a certain amount of experience.
Re:Egoless Programming (Score:5, Insightful)
Only to a young, pompous jackass do you.
Management vs. Geeks (Score:2)
"And he's on your side, having deliberately passed up a more lucrative career in management for a technical track."
Why they vs. us? Why can't we all just get along?
Software Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a book like this is what is wholly necessary. I am not saying this book does a good job of it (I haven't read it). There just needs to be a book that tells people how much of the software engineering information is false and unnecessary. This is so we don't have to either sift through all of it or even worse waste countless hours trying to follow a faulty discipline.
Yea I have an agenda because writing software is hard enough in itself. It is 10 times worse when cluttered with overhead. I remember my very first programming class in high school (it was at a community college) where I was told for a FACT that I should flowchart every function and include a separate box for every line of code. It is ridiculous and they are feeding this stuff into students heads as fact.
Re:Software Engineering (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Software Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
I think if you use UML as a "sketching on a napkin" tool to think your classes out, it'll be much more useful to you. I use use cases and UML to think about problems, and play with ideas. Sometimes I'll see something I hadn't noticed before, a piece of a class I'll need but which I hadn't anticipated. Sketching with UML lets you fool around with your design, and tinker with it.
Basically, it's like working an engineering or physics problem, sketching out your diagrams and fiddling with them, letting things occur to you, etc.
You should give it a chance. Ignore all the "Big Design Up Front" sticks in the mud and use UML as a lego set. You'll like it more that way, I think.
Re:Software Engineering (Score:3, Interesting)
Utter rubish. (Score:3, Interesting)
Many of the advances in computer sciences that have made life easier for many people in the IT industries come from people in the academic field.
Obviously you don't understand the demands of a teaching position. You have to prepare tha class, grade the students, keep up to date in the cutting edge and then deal with complete idiots that be
new definition for "fact" (Score:2, Insightful)
fact and fallacies (Score:2)
Fact 37: Rigorous inspections [code reviews] can remove up to 90% of errors before the first test case is run.
Fallacy 10: You teach people how to program by showing them how to write programs. Why don't we teach them to read programs first? Good question (and he has a few possible answers).
FACT: a piece of information presented as having objective reality - in fact : in truth
fact 21 & 37 are not f
Re:fact and fallacies (Score:3, Insightful)
OTOH, what data can you provide to contradict him? Your own personal perceptions? Or can you actually show verifiable numbers?
Re:fact and fallacies (Score:3, Interesting)
You are acting as if "fact" is the opposite of "false". It's not. "Fact" is the opposite of "Opinion".
"The earth's moon is made from green cheese" is a fact. It happens to be a false fact, but it is still a fact instead of an opinion.
Bullet points (Score:5, Funny)
Really, the worst thing about this book is that it doesn't come with a poster of just a bullet-pointed list of facts and fallacies that you can nail to your office wall (or your boss's).
Or your boss.
Some other good resources on the topic... (BSP) (Score:4, Informative)
This is Blatant Self Promotion (you have been warned).
Here's a good list of software resources [berteig.org], mostly books that I've collected over the last five years or so. Lots of stuff about agile, stuff for managers as well as developers.
I hope he mentions the Lions book (Score:4, Interesting)
This is exactly what John Lions was trying to do with his commentary [peer-to-peer.com]. And he used nothing less than the Unix kernel source code as an example of well-crafted, and very readable, code.
Rest in peace, John. Your little project helped more hackers than you could ever have known in this life.
A similar read (Score:3, Informative)
As an example, one of the laws mentioned in this discussion is given as "Individual developer performance varies considerably." (Law 31) Then some statistics are given showing the variability. Finally there is a comment on if we should or should not trust the numbers given.
does anyone esle find it incredible (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone esle find it incredible that this reviewer complains that the cranky old coot author doesn't bother to provide justifications where he really doesn't have anything compelling to add?
Knowing when to shut up is one of best indicators that someone cares enough about their subject matter that they don't feel the need to "fill air" as if other people can't supply their own experience.
I heartily condone the approach: here's what I think, take it or leave it.
I'm an old coot myself, and I've learned that it's generally a waste of time to write toward an audience that won't think for itself. If you boss won't think, a poster of convenient sound bites won't solve any problem that matters.
Project estimates (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what separates the men from the boys. Estimation of project requirements are not perfect until the project is complete, so you have no choice but to work with educated guesses.
Modern project management is an exercise in managing uncertainty.
It is easy to say how long it would take you to write a script, anyone can do that in their head: guess base on experience, multiply by x2 and have a reasonable estimate.
Now try estimating a thousands scripts (or circuits) done by hundreds of engineers of varying aptitudes that will result in a capital cost of several billion dollars over (hopefully) a few years! All of which is directly reflected in your retirement investments!
That kind of planning is real nuts-and-guts stuff that most of us well never have to wrestle with, and a "fact" like this grossly understates and misrepresents.
Programming is easy.
Planning is orders of magnitude harder by comparison.
I prefer programming, the latter makes my brainpan throb.
Teaching (Score:4, Interesting)
For the same reason we don't teach people how to write books by telling them to go read: If they're serious about writing, they're *already* avid readers. Teaching them to read would be redundant.
If a wannabe programmer isn't already reading code for ideas then he's wasting your time asking how to be a programmer.
Hmm, how about THIS fallacy? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have been doing QA/Testing for 10 years, and it is pretty sad how all-important people think programmers are. The best ones may be, but they aren't all the best ones. When you foster an atmosphere where "develpment is always right" you run into major roadblocks in software development. Requirements analysts can't do their job properly or requirements are ignored. Documentation people are glared at for trying to make the system understandable. (yet we all love to bitch about bad online documentation) Test people are seen as people who are just blocking the inevitablility of shipping the code. If anyone tries to even analyze why things are F'd up, they are seen as "not being team players" and "finger pointers", even if you are trying to fix the process and not the people.
I will say that what he says about inspections is right on. Although, I think just focusing only on code reviews is wrong - rigorous reviews of requirements/code/test plans/process docs/user doc/etc will remove 90% of the defects. And defects in requirements are much more costly to fix later. The trick is balancing which of these are most important for your company to review, depending on the project. You can't just do it willy-nilly, you have to do a risk assessment on it and make a decision based on something.
I actually had a director of engineering say in a meeting "Since we implemented my new requirements management process, I *guarantee* that the code will work, first time, out of the box." I laughed out loud, and received a very dirty look from him, but agreement from everyone else. Needless to say, that release is the worst one we have had in 5 years, and it is at least 6 months over schedule. People have had to work a lot of OT to try and shine this turd, and they are getting burnt out. Most places do software development and not software engineering. Which is fine, as long as you are clear about it.
I just thought of a very good analogy that /.ers can understand. There is probably little doubt that Microsoft has a lot of good programmers. However, their culture and business model has lead the direction of their product. That alone should show you that software development is not all about the programmer. On the other hand, OSS is great but it can only get so far on "good code". Once it is managed, it can be pretty powerful.
Re:What bugs me.. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's not an exact figure, but it sure got his point across as to
an approximation of the relationship, didn't it?
Re:What bugs me.. (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, I've generally held that the complexity of implementation is generally an exponential function of the general complexity of the problem. Allowing additional degrees of freedom in a design is typically very expensive. You aren't just adding that additional degree of freedom to the design, you have to make the rest of the design aware of that new dimension and put it into implementation.
Re:What bugs me.. (Score:2)
Re:What bugs me.. (Score:5, Interesting)
More often I think folk don't understand what a 25% increase in complexity really is. Once you have a valid framework to make this evaluation it is easier to see how this relationship works, well, after you evolve some way of evaluating solution complexity as well...
Re:What bugs me.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What bugs me.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What bugs me.. (Score:3, Insightful)
They're meaningless. The complexity of the solution is the complexity of the problem.
Re:What bugs me.. (Score:3, Interesting)
The way you want to define the compexity of the solution makes it the same as the compexity of the problem. That's a perfectly valid defintion, but that's not the one the author uses (clearly).
What I think the author means is that the difficulty to understand the code that is the solution increases 100% for every 25% increase in the difficutly to understand the details of the problem.
That's clumsy language, but I think it gets the gisty of the point over.
By example, if you have
Re:What bugs me.. (Score:2)
Re:What bugs me.. (Score:5, Funny)
At university I and a friend invented the IRS.
We smoked pretty heavily in those days (cigarettes) and felt a need to justify it.... 87% of Nobel prize winners are smokers. Furthermore, children who smoke are more likely to get GCSE grades A to C; non-smoking prisoners reoffend more often. In fact smoking cures AIDS. And cancer.
All these came from the sound research of the IRS (Institute for Random Statistics). We got pretty far down the list with some people.
Re:Engineering? (Score:4, Insightful)
Webster's:
1 en-gi-neer n
3 c: a person who carries through an enterprise by skillful or artful contrivance.
So basically, according to Webster's, bite me.
Riddle Me This (Score:4, Insightful)
We based the configuration mgmt program on IEEE standard 828-1990. As part of the program we modeled our Software Requirements Specification process off of IEEE standard 830-1984. Our design practices off of IEEE 1016-1987. Our testing practices off of IEEE 1012-1986.
We demonstrated adherence to these standards of practice in order to gain FDA approval for our robotic device. Our software development cycle flowed as specified in our carefully engineered plans.
We engineered software. But we didn't have engineering degrees. Did we dilute your title?
Re:Engineering? (Score:3, Funny)
Make that "outclasses my trade".
I know a recent EE graduate. At the beginning of every university course, someone in the class would timoroulsy raise a hand and ask the professor "Will there be any programming in this course?".
A huge collective sigh of relief would greet a "No". Couldn't hack it.
Re:Engineering? (Score:4, Interesting)
Some jurisdictions do allow Software Engineering. APEG-BC (The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia) lets Software Engineers register. UVic (University of Victoria) grants a four-year B.Eng in Software Engineering. Other universities in BC offer the same degree. I didn't go to these other places, so I don't have any details on them.
Other places in Canada offer B.Eng degrees in Software. I'm sure that there are accredited institutions in other countries that provide Software Engineering degrees. (B.Eng, not B.Sc)
Now, those NSE and MSCE guys are a different story.
Re:Engineering? (Score:3, Interesting)
Technically, computer science and computer engineering are (or should be) distinct, in the same way that chemistry and chemical engineering are distinct. Most people I know with CS degrees fall somewhere in between the two. Some universities seem to focus more on the science end (in many cases the CS dept grew out of the math dept,
Re:Algorithmic-Based Programming Is Wrong-Headed (Score:2)
That link is so full of technical BS and hyped up marketing drivel, it's nearly impossible to tell what the point is.
Re:Silver Bullet Is Wrong-Headed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Algorithmic-Based Programming Is Wrong-Headed (Score:3, Informative)
Uhm... I have a hard time taking that guy's stance on software development seriously when the same site also hosts the following rather, uhm, interesting [whacked the fuck out] paper: http://users.adelphia.net/~lilavois/Seven/bible.h
Re:Algorithmic-Based Programming Is Wrong-Headed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Algorithmic-Based Programming Is Wrong-Headed (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be funny if it weren't also sad.
Brooks still reigns and there remains no Silver Bullet. Wake me when these guys have a decently complex program that is better than anything I can come up with in Python. (Don't miss that second clause; making a program do something in 2004 is nothing special. It needs to be better. Handwaving is not an OS.)
Maintenance (Score:3, Insightful)
- for the next decade or three
- on hardware that wasn't even on the drawing boards when the program was written
- for uses that, while within the program's theoretical capability, were never comprehended by the original creators.
Ever maintain a code base for a decade? It's painful - more painful than writing new c