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Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering, by Robert L. Glass
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The practice of building software is a “new kid on the block” technology. Though it may not seem this way for those who have been in the field for most of their careers, in the overall scheme of professions, software builders are relative “newbies.”
In the short history of the software field, a lot of facts have been identified, and a lot of fallacies promulgated. Those facts and fallacies are what this book is about.
There’s a problem with those facts–and, as you might imagine, those fallacies. Many of these fundamentally important facts are learned by a software engineer, but over the short lifespan of the software field, all too many of them have been forgotten. While reading Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering , you may experience moments of “Oh, yes, I had forgotten that,” alongside some “Is that really true?” thoughts.
The author of this book doesn’t shy away from controversy. In fact, each of the facts and fallacies is accompanied by a discussion of whatever controversy envelops it. You may find yourself agreeing with a lot of the facts and fallacies, yet emotionally disturbed by a few of them! Whether you agree or disagree, you will learn why the author has been called “the premier curmudgeon of software practice.”
These facts and fallacies are fundamental to the software building field–forget or neglect them at your peril!
- Sales Rank: #394566 in Books
- Published on: 2002-11-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .60" w x 7.20" l, .78 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 224 pages
From the Back Cover
The practice of building software is a "new kid on the block" technology. Though it may not seem this way for those who have been in the field for most of their careers, in the overall scheme of professions, software builders are relative "newbies." In the short history of the software field, a lot of facts have been identified, and a lot of fallacies promulgated. Those facts and fallacies are what this book is about. There's a problem with those facts-and, as you might imagine, those fallacies. Many of these fundamentally important facts are learned by a software engineer, but over the short lifespan of the software field, all too many of them have been forgotten. While reading "Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering," you may experience moments of "Oh, yes, I had forgotten that," alongside some "Is that really true?" thoughts. The author of this book doesn't shy away from controversy. In fact, each of the facts and fallacies is accompanied by a discussion of whatever controversy envelops it. You may find yourself agreeing with a lot of the facts and fallacies, yet emotionally disturbed by a few of them! Whether you agree or disagree, you will learn why the author has been called "the premier curmudgeon of software practice." These facts and fallacies are fundamental to the software building field-forget or neglect them at your peril!
About the Author
Robert Glass is the founder of Computing Trends. He has written more than a dozen books on software engineering and on the lessons of computing failures. Robert is trusted by many as a leading authority on software engineering, especially by those who read his columns in Communications of the ACM and IEEE Software. Robert also publishes a newsletter, The Software Practitioner, and speaks frequently at software engineering events.
0321117425AB09232002
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
When I first heard that Bob Glass was going to write this book and model it after my 201 Principles of Software Development, I was a bit worried. After all, Bob is one of the best writers in the industry, and he would provide tough competition for my book. And then, when Bob asked me to write his foreword, I became even more worried; after all, how can I endorse a book that seems to compete directly with one of mine? Now that I have read Fifty-Five Facts, I am pleased and honored (and no longer worried!) to have the opportunity to write this foreword.
The software industry is in the same state of affairs that the pharmaceutical industry was in during the late nineteenth century. Sometimes it seems that we have more snake-oil salespeople and doomsayers than sensible folks practicing and preaching in our midst. Every day, we hear from somebody that they have discovered this great new cure for some insurmountable problem. Thus we have oft heard of quick cures for low efficiency, low quality, unhappy customers, poor communication, changing requirements, ineffective testing, poor management, and on and on. There are so many such pundits of the perfunctory that we sometimes wonder if perhaps some portion of the proclaimed panaceas are possibly practical. Who do we ask? Who in this industry can we trust? Where can we get the truth? The answer is Bob Glass.
Bob has had a history of providing us with short treatises on the many software disasters that have occurred over the years. I have been waiting for him to distill the common elements from these disasters so that we can benefit more easily from his many experiences. The 55 facts that Bob Glass discusses in this wonderful book are not just conjectures on his part. They are exactly what I have been waiting for: i.e., the wisdom gained by the author by examining in detail the hundreds of cases he has written about in the past.
The 55 facts that follow are likely to not be popular with all readers. Some are in direct opposition to the so-called “modern” ways of doing things. For those of you who wish to ignore the advice contained within these covers, I can only wish you the safest of journeys, but I fear for your safety. You are treading on well-trod territory, known to be full of mines, and many have destroyed their careers trying to pass. The best advice I can give you is to read any of Bob Glass’ earlier books concerning software disasters. For those of you who wish to follow the advice contained herein, you too are following a well-trod path. However this path is full of successful testimonies. It is a path of awareness and knowledge. Trust Bob Glass because he has been there before. He has had the privilege of analyzing his own successes and failures along with hundreds of others’ successes and failures. Stand on his shoulders, and you will more likely succeed in this industry. Ignore his advice and be prepared for Bob to call you in a few years to ask you about your project—to add it to his next compilation of software disaster stories.
Alan M. Davis, Spring, 2002
0321117425P07302002
Most helpful customer reviews
88 of 90 people found the following review helpful.
A valuable and easy to read summary of the state of the art
By Henrik Warne
I have read a fair number of software engineering books, and this is one of the more enjoyable books that I have read. When I first heard about it, I thought the concept of a sort of summary of the state of the art sounded really interesting. Although I haven't read any of the author's previous books, I have read and enjoyed his columns in IEEE Software and Communications of the ACM, so I had high hopes about this book. And I wasn't disappointed.
Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering is divided into 55 facts and 10 fallacies. Each fact and fallacy is presented in the same way. There is a headline/slogan that summarizes it, usually one or two pages of Discussion giving more details, then a Controversy section describing what (if anything) people disagree about and finally Sources and References.
The 55 Facts are divided into the following sections and sub-sections: Management (People, Tools and Techniques, Estimation, Reuse, Complexity), Life Cycle (Requirements, Design, Coding, Error Removal, Testing, Reviews and Inspections, Maintenance), Quality (Quality, Reliability, Efficiency) and Research.
The 10 Fallacies are divided into Management, Life Cycle and Education.
This way of organizing the material works really well, and makes the book very accessible and easy to read. It also allows you to jump around and read what interests you the most first (which is what I did, although I eventually read all of it).
Many of the facts are well known (for example Fact 3 "Adding people to a late project makes it later", Fact 16 "Reuse-in-the-large remains a mostly unsolved problem" and Fact 24 "Requirement errors are the most expensive to fix during production"), but that doesn't matter. It is actually good to be reminded of these facts even if you already know them, and the author does a very good job of summarizing them.
Another thing I like about the book is the Sources and Reference parts (although I think they might as well have been combined into just one Reference section). Often there are references to research papers where the original fact was presented. It is nice to know that what is presented as a fact is indeed a fact that has been validated by research, and not just the opinion of the author (although there is certainly room for opinions in a lot of places as well).
There are also lots of references to other books on software engineering, and a lot of the classic books (like The Mythical Man-Month, Peopleware and Design Patterns) are referenced. So there is plenty of leads in case you want to find out more about a certain fact.
Among the facts I liked the most were Fact 12, Fact 21 and Fact 26.
Fact 12: "Since estimates are so faulty, there is little reason to be concerned when software projects do not meet estimated targets. But everyone is concerned anyway". This fact and the related ones simply state that when a project is late, it is very likely because the estimated time to complete it was unrealistic. Very true.
Fact 21: "For every 25 percent increase in problem complexity, there is a 100 percent increase in complexity of the software solution." I had never seen this fact before, but it does ring true to me. And as the author writes, it explains a lot of the other facts in the book as well.
Fact 26: "Explicit requirements 'explode' as implicit (design) requirements for a solution evolve". In other words, each explicit requirement leads to many more implicit requirements (by a factor of up to 50). This too I had never seen stated, but I definitely recognize this from my own experience.
The Fallacies section list ten common misunderstandings in software engineering, and this is where I disagree on a couple of points. Fallacy 7 states "Random test input is a good way to optimize testing". I agree that it can not be the only test approach, but since he also writes "It may or may not survive as a test approach", he is skeptical to it in general. My own experience is that it is an invaluable complement that helps flush out numerous what I call "timing dependent" bugs caused by the nature of asynchronous events.
I also don't think all his arguments in Fallacy 8 are valid. I agree that since there is no data demonstrating the truth of "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow", we should not just accept it as truth. But I think he misses the point when he refers to research showing that inspections don't get much extra benefit beyond 2 to 4 participants. My interpretation is that the "enough eyeballs" are not so much inspecting the software in question as running it and debugging it when there is a problem. And the "all bugs are shallow" should not be interpreted too literally. Of course the bugs may still be difficult, but if many people look at it, the chances of someone solving it fairly quickly increases.
Those two examples notwithstanding, I did find myself nodding my head and saying "yes, I agree with that" almost all of the time reading this book.
There are many more interesting facts that I have not commented on, and if you are interested in software engineering I highly recommend this book.
33 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
Insightful To The New Manager/Team Leader
By Philip R. Heath
The other reviewers have done a fine job of covering the content of the book. I will comment about its usefulness. In short, this book is truly valuable to the developer who has recently been promoted to team leader. While developers would benefit greatly from this book, the reality is that most developers would rather read books like "Effective C++", "Design Patterns", "Expert One on One Oracle", etc. To the new manager, though, this book is a gem. The book talks about specific management issues as well as the development life cycle and quality. In short, the book focuses exactly on what the team leader does and the team leader's team. In addition to the material presented in the book, the author gives a great number of sources and reference for further reading.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
(Not so) common wisdom about building software
By Celia Redmore
Bob Glass is a programmers' programmer -- he's at the other end of the scale from software engineering gurus. This collection of fifty-five software facts and ten fallacies is distilled from his forty-five years of programming experience. Much of it is the kind of thing your grandmother could have told you -- if your grandmother was a programmer -- but some items will surprise and others annoy some people.
Take the following two items as examples:
"The 60/60 rule: 60 percent of software's dollar is spent on maintenance, and 60 percent of that maintenance is enhancement."
"Understanding the existing product consumes roughly 30 percent of the total maintenance time."
That implies that one of the most valuable skills you can teach a Computer Science student is how to *read* code. But as Glass points out (and he taught graduate students for a while) CS courses only teach students to *write* programs, and then they don't often grade the code on readability.
The section on design, which Glass describes as the most intellectual phase of a software project, is the best description of how software designers actually work that I've ever read. He claims that top-ranked designers routinely ignore or subvert the methodologies used by their shops in order to do the job the right way. He has an especial warning for anyone trying to develop anything other than the most trivial program using XP.
The ten fallacies may have taken some well-known quotes out of context. Surely Eric Raymond of the open source movement didn't really mean, "Given enough eyes all bugs are shallow", to be taken literally. Either way, the point Glass is trying to make is that, without proof, we shouldn't *assume* that open source code is less buggy than proprietary code.
Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering is aimed at two audiences: those without Glass' 45 years of programming experience, and those who have it but, like all good professionals, want to refresh the basics. Since some of the wisdom came with useful statistics that I've never seen published before, I'd recommend the book to anyone involved in developing or maintaining software.
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