Frequently Forgotten Fundamental Facts about Software Engineering

Re:Frequently Forgotten Fundamental Facts about Software Eng... by idlewords on Thursday December 03, 2009 @07:42AM (#974230)

This article is really crying out for footnotes. It cites a lot of studies and facts, but provides no references at all.

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Re:Frequently Forgotten Fundamental Facts about Software Eng... by gruseom on Thursday December 03, 2009 @12:14PM (#974669)

InclinedPlane's comment already says it, but I think it's worth putting more strongly. The OP is nothing but a synopsis of Glass' book Facts and Fallcies of Software Engineering, which is remarkable precisely for the fact that it does provide supporting references for every one of its claims. Glass' meticulousness in this respect is nearly unique in the space (Steve Mcconnell also comes to mind) and he deserves to be better known for it.

That being said, the effect of all those references (on me anyway) was more to highlight the weakness of the research literature than to make a convincing case. But that's not Glass' fault. He does a great job of reporting what the literature says.

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Re:Frequently Forgotten Fundamental Facts about Software Eng... by InclinedPlane on Thursday December 03, 2009 @08:01AM (#974244)

A lot of these come from Glass's excellent book "Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering": http://www.amazon.com/Facts-Fallacies-Software-Engineering-R...

It's quite concise (224 pages), but it's chock full of quite excellent advice. Each one of these points (and many others) is fleshed out in a separate chapter that gives a good deal of background, clarification, and supporting evidence.

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