No Silver Bullet Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering

The author considers the reasons why there is no single development, in either technology or in management technique, that by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement in productivity, reliability, and simplicity of software. He does…

Twenty years after the paper No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks first appeared in IEEE Computer in April 1987 (following its 1986 publication in Information Processing, ISBN 0444-7077-3) does the…

A celebratory panel took place at the 22nd International Conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications in Montreal. The occasion was the 20th anniversary of Fred Brooks' paper "no silver bullet: essence and…

Summary form only given. The author examines the difficulties in solving the generic problem of finding reliable, efficient, timely, and cost-contained solutions for automation problems in software engineering. He notes that it is desirable to have…

Fred Brooks argued in 1986 that, for various reasons, no software engineering silver bullet would be found in the next decade. I argue now that the main reason that there can be no software engineering silver bullet is that as soon as one is…

A variety of programming accidents, i.e., models, methods, artifacts, and tools, are examined to determine that each has a step that programmers find very painful. Consequently, they habitually avoid or postpone the step. This pain is generally…

The article discusses a thinking framework that can be applied to software engineering based on an actionable kernel, a main component in computer operating systems. It states that development of the kernel was inspired by a prompt from the Software…

Presents the author's comments on the earliest creative milestone in software history. Development of business applications software and an application-specific computer called LEO in 1951; Excitement in the field of computing; Discussion on the…

The software industry revolution based on cultural change resulting in the migration from process-oriented programming to object-oriented programming.

Superdistribution could let software engineers overcome the software crisis as tangible domains surmounted the same problem, by encapsulating complexity so thoroughly that everyone else can forget it. The solution requires enforcing property rights…