paper · 1986
Fred Brooks · read the source
“There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order of magnitude improvement in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity.”
Fred Brooks, No Silver Bullet (1986) · Abstract · read it
Kept because it has been tested against forty years of silver bullets and holds. Each new tool, including the current one, is sold as the exception. The base rate says to expect a good gain and not a tenfold one.
“The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build. No other part of the conceptual work is so difficult as establishing the detailed technical requirements, including all the interfaces to people, to machines, and to other software systems.”
Fred Brooks, No Silver Bullet (1986) · Section on requirements refinement · read it
Kept because it moves the difficulty to where it actually is. Code that does the wrong thing well is the commonest failure, and no amount of typing speed helps with it.
