Name: Making Software
ISBN: 9780596808327

Making Software

Many claims are made about how certain tools, technologies, and practices improve software development. But which claims are verifiable, and which are merely wishful thinking? In this book, leading thinkers such as Steve McConnell, Barry Boehm, and Barbara Kitchenham offer essays that uncover the truth and unmask myths commonly held among the software development community. Their insights may surprise you. Are some programmers really ten times more productive than others? Does writing tests first help you develop better code faster? Can code metrics predict the number of bugs in a piece of software? Do design patterns actually make better software? What effect does personality have on pair programming? What matters more: how far apart people are geographically, or how far apart they are in the org chart? Contributors include: Jorge Aranda Tom Ball Victor R. Basili Andrew Begel Christian Bird Barry Boehm Marcelo Cataldo Steven Clarke Jason Cohen Robert DeLine Madeline Diep Hakan Erdogmus Michael Godfrey Mark Guzdial Jo E. Hannay Ahmed E. Hassan Israel Herraiz Kim Sebastian Herzig Cory Kapser Barbara Kitchenham Andrew Ko Lucas Layman Steve McConnell Tim Menzies Gail Murphy Nachi Nagappan Thomas J. Ostrand Dewayne Perry Marian Petre Lutz Prechelt Rahul Premraj Forrest Shull Beth Simon Diomidis Spinellis Neil Thomas Walter Tichy Burak Turhan Elaine J. Weyuker Michele A. Whitecraft Laurie Williams Wendy M. Williams Andreas Zeller Thomas Zimmermann

What Hacker News says

elricDec 2024

If you're interested in some scientific background to Software Engineering, I can recommend the book "Making Software" (O'reilly) by Andy Oram & Greg Wilson. It's a bit old now, but addresses and challenges many common beliefs about Software Engineering.

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/making-software/9780596...

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loup-vaillantOct 2024

The most reputable resource I know of is Making Software, edited by Andy Oram and Greg Wilson.

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kennethhFeb 2022

Surprised nobody have mentioned Making software, https://www.amazon.com/Making-Software-Really-Works-Believe/...

It takes a empirical view on the software process. Does writing tests first help you develop better code faster? Can code metrics predict the number of bugs in a piece of software? Do design patterns actually make better software?

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pjmorrisDec 2020

Wholeheartedly agree with recommendations for Kernighan and Bentley. I think there's one Kernighan book I don't own, and they are all gold (if old.)

I'd suggest anything and everything written by Gerald Weinberg, starting with what looks most appealing to you now.

'Making Software', edited by Wilson and Oram is chock-full of the latest research of its day (10 years ago.) It's dry, but it presents work of some top SE researchers. Following that group on twitter/Google scholar would bring you to the edge of what is studied in SE research.

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tomgpNov 2020

If you’re looking for something a little more focused I can heartily recommend Andy Oram and Greg Wilson’s “ Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It” it’s a great collection of literature reviews around a lots of common software engineering practices.

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PaulAJMar 2020

* Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence by Andrew Hodges. The definitive biography, with lots of detailed explanations of his work.

* Making Software, edited by Oram & Wilson. A bunch of papers about evidence-based software engineering.

* Beautiful Code, also edited by Oram & Wilson. A bunch of papers about especially elegant pieces of software.

* Eiffel, by Bertrand Meyer. What Java should have been.

* The Devil's DP Dictionary, by Stan Kelly Bootle. A satirical look at the computer industry circa 1980.

* The Jargon File. (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/). The language of the Elder Days.

* Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert Glass.

* The Pragmatic Programmer by Hunt & Thomas.

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