Skip to main content

Software Engineering: A Book on $foo

Rant warning:

I'm reading a new book. Let me summarize:
$foo is awesome. It will help you get your projects done on time and on budget. Traditional software projects fail because they don't use $foo. The people who do manage to deliver software on time and on budget only do so because they are heroic programmers. Their process is actually fighting against them. They should use $foo instead. Traditional software projects fail because they deliver the wrong features too late. This is because they use the waterfall approach to software design instead of using $foo. If you use $foo, you'll deliver your software on time and on budget, you'll have fewer bugs, and you'll have fun doing it!
Like, gag me with a spoon! Books been coming up with new approaches, making the same promises, and criticizing the same waterfall model since the '70s!

Ok, here's a fun idea. Come up with a design book that doesn't criticize the waterfall model, but criticizes some other $foo technique instead, or come up with a book from within the last decade that actually thinks the waterfall model is still a good idea.
Labels:

Comments

jjinux said…
Just to be perfectly clear, I am not saying that waterfall model is a good idea. I'm just tired of books that are still making fun of it. I've never used the waterfall model in my entire life!
12:49 PM
jjinux said…
Here's a quote from the book, "There are many teams out there delivering projects on time, within budget, and delighting their stake- holders, and they manage to do it again and again. It’s not easy. It takes discipline and dedication, and relies on a high degree of communication and collaboration, but it is possible. People who work like this tend to agree it is also a lot of fun!"
1:16 PM
Adriano Meis said…
Extreme Programming Refactored: The Case Against XP
by Matt Stephens & Doug Rosenberg
1:30 AM
jjinux said…
Ooh, nice!
1:37 AM
jjinux said…
(And by "nice", I mean, congratulations on finding a book that criticizes something other than the waterfall model!)
1:40 AM
Adriano Meis said…
I've actually bought and read it and it's not bad at all :)
There was another one I cannot remember..
2:08 AM
control valves said…
Yup, it's a good book.
9:30 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ubuntu 20.04 on a 2015 15" MacBook Pro

I decided to give Ubuntu 20.04 a try on my 2015 15" MacBook Pro. I didn't actually install it; I just live booted from a USB thumb drive which was enough to try out everything I wanted. In summary, it's not perfect, and issues with my camera would prevent me from switching, but given the right hardware, I think it's a really viable option. The first thing I wanted to try was what would happen if I plugged in a non-HiDPI screen given that my laptop has a HiDPI screen. Without sub-pixel scaling, whatever scale rate I picked for one screen would apply to the other. However, once I turned on sub-pixel scaling, I was able to pick different scale rates for the internal and external displays. That looked ok. I tried plugging in and unplugging multiple times, and it didn't crash. I doubt it'd work with my Thunderbolt display at work, but it worked fine for my HDMI displays at home. I even plugged it into my TV, and it stuck to the 100% scaling I picked for the othe
1 comment
Read more

ERNOS: Erlang Networked Operating System

I've been reading Dreaming in Code lately, and I really like it. If you're not a dreamer, you may safely skip the rest of this post ;) In Chapter 10, "Engineers and Artists", Alan Kay, John Backus, and Jaron Lanier really got me thinking. I've also been thinking a lot about Minix 3 , Erlang , and the original Lisp machine . The ideas are beginning to synthesize into something cohesive--more than just the sum of their parts. Now, I'm sure that many of these ideas have already been envisioned within Tunes.org , LLVM , Microsoft's Singularity project, or in some other place that I haven't managed to discover or fully read, but I'm going to blog them anyway. Rather than wax philosophical, let me just dump out some ideas: Start with Minix 3. It's a new microkernel, and it's meant for real use, unlike the original Minix. "This new OS is extremely small, with the part that runs in kernel mode under 4000 lines of executable code.&quo
50 comments
Read more

Haskell or Erlang?

I've coded in both Erlang and Haskell. Erlang is practical, efficient, and useful. It's got a wonderful niche in the distributed world, and it has some real success stories such as CouchDB and jabber.org. Haskell is elegant and beautiful. It's been successful in various programming language competitions. I have some experience in both, but I'm thinking it's time to really commit to learning one of them on a professional level. They both have good books out now, and it's probably time I read one of those books cover to cover. My question is which? Back in 2000, Perl had established a real niche for systems administration, CGI, and text processing. The syntax wasn't exactly beautiful (unless you're into that sort of thing), but it was popular and mature. Python hadn't really become popular, nor did it really have a strong niche (at least as far as I could see). I went with Python because of its elegance, but since then, I've coded both p
66 comments
Read more