Ch. 16-17
Brooks, Frederick P
Addison-Wesley, 1995
Summary:
The author discusses the difficulties related to software engineering and how there is no single "silver bullet" solution that will cause a large increase in productivity. The author splits the characteristics of software engineering into two groups, essential and accidental. Essential characteristics are those that are characteristic of software engineering and will not be fixed in the future. Accidental characteristics are the issues that face software engineering today but are likely to be fixed in the future. There have been several advancements in recent years that have helped to reduce the accidental difficulties related to software engineering, such as high level languages and time sharing.
The author does offer some suggestions to help combat the decreased productivity caused by the essential characteristics of software. For example, buying premade software components can drastically reduce the time spent designing and implementing complex software. The author also suggests using incremental development and prototyping in order to create a better specification of the program before building it.
In chapter 17 the author looks back at the silver bullet paper and observes that no silver bullet has been created yet. The author also goes into detail about the difficulties of correctly using object oriented programming and designing reusable components.
Discussion:
This reading is interesting because it offers a more pessimistic perspective on the advancement of software engineering. I did not like the fact that the original paper was written so long ago that it seemed obsolete. This writing can be used by anyone in the software engineering field looking to increase productivity.
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