Voodoos of Software Engineering

The required techniques of effective reasoning are pretty formal, but as long as programming is done by people that don't master them, the software crisis will remain with us and will be considered an incurable disease. And you know what incurable diseases do: they invite the quacks and charlatans in, who in this case take the form of Software Engineering gurus. —attributed to Edsger Dijkstra, 1930 to 2002.

extreme programing diagram
eXtreme Programing voodoo diagram [image source ]

Anti Hacker y2k

Anti Hacker y2k

Complexity and Tedium of Software Engineering

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By Others

• [Defective C++ By Yossi Kreinin. At http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/defective.html , accessed on 2010-08-09 ]

• [The Unix-Hater's handbook By Simson Garfinkel, Daniel Weise, Steven Strassmann, Don Hopkins. At http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf ] (local copy The_Unix-Haters_handbook_ugh.pdf )

• The Rise of “Worse is Better” By Richard P Gabriel. At http://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html

Richard Gabriel is a well known figure in lisp community, the starter of what's now known as XEmacs. He's the recipient of ACM's 1998 Fellows Award and the 2004 Allen Newell Award.

The “Worse is Better” is one of the first article that analyzed the strategy of software success from a evolutionary biology perspective.

• [Extreme Programming Explained By Yossi Kreinin. At http://www.yosefk.com/blog/extreme-programming-explained.html , accessed on 2010-08-12 ]

• [“Buffer Overflow” Security Problems By Henry Baker. At “Buffer Overflow” Security Problems ]

Henry Baker is a well known figure in lisp community. One of the founder of Symbolics. Recognized as a Distinguished Scientist by ACM.

• [Java: Slow, ugly and irrelevant By Simson Garfinkel. At https://www.salon.com/2001/01/08/bad_java/ , accessed on 2010-08-12 ] (local copy Simson_Garfinke_Java_2001.zip )

• Optimization: Your Worst Enemy By Joseph M Newcomer. At http://flounder.com/optimization.htm (local copy joseph_newcomer_optim.zip )

• Will it rot my students' brains if they use Mathematica? By Theodore W Gray. At theodoregray.com (local copy brainrot.htm )

Theodore is the author of Mathematica frontend. The article discusses educational math software, video games, and violence.

• Go To Statement Considered Harmful By Edsger W Dijkstra. http://www.acm.org/classics/oct95/; (local copy 1968_dijkstra_goto.htm )

• Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing (The Wired Interview) By Gary Wolf. At wired.com. (Local copy steve_jobs_1996.htm )

The article is a interview. Steve Job discuss education system and design. Jobs is a insightful man.

• Communications of the ACM 34, 4 (April 1991), 18 By Henry G Baker. At http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/letters/CACM-DubiousAchievement.html. (local copy DubiousAchievement.txt )

The article is about the harm of speed.

• Censorzilla By Jamie Zawinski. At http://www.jwz.org/doc/censorzilla.html (local copy censorzilla.htm)

Jamie is a notorious programer of xemacs and Netscape web browser, has written a webpage that contains codes from Netscape browser before its Open Source release. Note the profanity laiden comments and what they say. It gives a indication of the pain and faaked-up-ness of computing industry.

• Let's Make Unix Not Suck By Miguel De Icaza. At http://primates.ximian.com/%7Emiguel/bongo-bong.html

Miguel de Icaza is the man behind Linux's Gnome project and Mono project. This article is written in the era when unixes do not really have a desktop or any concept of coherent development framework. It was controversial.

Code Complete 42bwg
Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction By Steve C McConnell Buy at amazon

Code Complete, i read parts in 1990s. Don't recall much about it except that this is about the only science based appoarch on the questions of software engineering methodoligy questions. Am taking a look again.

this is in contrast to other voodoo in programing, such as the {agile, extreme programing, unix philosophy}

Throw away all your Design Patterns or eXtreme Programming books. If you want a scientific book on software development analysis, read this book instead.

Steve McConnell. «a author of many software engineering textbooks including Code Complete, Rapid Development, and Software Estimation. In 1998, McConnell was named as one of the three most influential people in the software industry by Software Development Magazine, along with Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds.»

• The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How To Restore The Sanity By Alan Cooper. Buy at amazon

This book explains away the errors of today's softwares. Alan Cooper also wrote the book About Face, on software interface design.

Alan Cooper is expert in user interface design. He pioneered the visual programing in Microsoft's Visual Basic.

2002