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The Mythical Man-Month
''The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering'' is a book on software engineering and project management by Fred Brooks first published in 1975, with subsequent editions in 1982 and 1995. Its central theme is that adding manpower to a software project that is behind schedule delays it even longer. This idea is known as Brooks's law, and is presented along with the second-system effect and advocacy of Software prototyping, prototyping. Brooks's observations are based on his experiences at IBM while managing the development of OS/360. He had added more programmers to a project falling behind schedule, a decision that he would later conclude had, counter-intuitively, delayed the project even further. He also made the mistake of asserting that one project—involved in writing an ALGOL compiler—would require six months, regardless of the number of workers involved (it required longer). The tendency for managers to repeat such errors in project development led Brooks to qui ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fred Brooks
Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr. (April 19, 1931 – November 17, 2022) was an American computer architect, software engineer, and computer scientist, best known for managing development of IBM's System/360 family of mainframe computers and the OS/360 software support package, then later writing candidly about those experiences in his seminal book '' The Mythical Man-Month''. In 1976, Brooks was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for "contributions to computer system design and the development of academic programs in computer sciences". Brooks received many awards, including the National Medal of Technology in 1985 and the Turing Award in 1999. Education Born on April 19, 1931, in Durham, North Carolina, he attended Duke University, graduating in 1953 with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics, and he received a Ph.D. in applied mathematics (computer science) from Harvard University in 1956, supervised by Howard Aiken. Brooks served as the graduate teaching a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amdahl's Law
In computer architecture, Amdahl's law (or Amdahl's argument) is a formula that shows how much faster a task can be completed when more resources are added to the system. The law can be stated as: "the overall performance improvement gained by optimizing a single part of a system is limited by the fraction of time that the improved part is actually used". It is named after computer scientist Gene Amdahl, and was presented at the American Federation of Information Processing Societies (AFIPS) Spring Joint Computer Conference in 1967. Amdahl's law is often used in parallel computing to predict the theoretical speedup when using multiple processors. Definition In the context of Amdahl's law, speedup can be defined as: \text = \frac or \text = \frac Amdahl's law can be formulated in the following way: : \text_\text = \frac where * \text_\text represents the total speedup of a program * \text_ represents the proportion of time spent on the portion of the code where improve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Development Books
Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital computers in the mid-20th century. Early programs were written in the machine language specific to the hardware. The introduction of high-level programming languages in 1958 allowed for more human-readable instructions, making software development easier and more portable across different computer architectures. Software in a programming language is run through a compiler or Interpreter (computing), interpreter to execution (computing), execute on the architecture's hardware. Over time, software has become complex, owing to developments in Computer network, networking, operating systems, and databases. Software can generally be categorized into two main types: # operating systems, which manage hardware resources and provide services for applicat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1975 Non-fiction Books
It was also declared the ''International Women's Year'' by the United Nations and the European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe. Events January * January 1 – Watergate scandal (United States): John N. Mitchell, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are found guilty of the Watergate cover-up. * January 2 ** The Federal Rules of Evidence are approved by the United States Congress. ** A bomb blast at Samastipur, Bihar, India, fatally wounds Lalit Narayan Mishra, Minister of Railways. * January 5 – Tasman Bridge disaster: The Tasman Bridge in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, is struck by the bulk ore carrier , causing a partial collapse resulting in 12 deaths. * January 15 – Alvor Agreement: Portugal announces that it will grant independence to Angola on November 11. * January 20 ** In Hanoi, North Vietnam, the Politburo approves the final military offensive against South Vietnam. ** Work is abandoned on the 1974 Anglo-French Channel Tunnel scheme. * January ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Development Process
In software engineering, a software development process or software development life cycle (SDLC) is a process of planning and managing software development. It typically involves dividing software development work into smaller, parallel, or sequential steps or sub-processes to improve design and/or product management. The methodology may include the pre-definition of specific deliverables and artifacts that are created and completed by a project team to develop or maintain an application. Most modern development processes can be vaguely described as agile. Other methodologies include waterfall, prototyping, iterative and incremental development, spiral development, rapid application development, and extreme programming. A life-cycle "model" is sometimes considered a more general term for a category of methodologies and a software development "process" is a particular instance as adopted by a specific organization. For example, many specific software development processe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Productive Projects And Teams
Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production process, i.e. output per unit of input, typically over a specific period of time. The most common example is the (aggregate) labour productivity measure, one example of which is GDP per worker. There are many different definitions of productivity (including those that are not defined as ratios of output to input) and the choice among them depends on the purpose of the productivity measurement and data availability. The key source of difference between various productivity measures is also usually related (directly or indirectly) to how the outputs and the inputs are aggregated to obtain such a ratio-type measure of productivity. Productivity is a crucial factor in the production performance of firms and nations. Increasing national productivity ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Cathedral And The Bazaar
''The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary'' (abbreviated ''CatB'') is an essay, and later a book, by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, based on his observations of the Linux kernel development process and his experiences managing an open source project, fetchmail. It examines the struggle between top-down and bottom-up design. The essay was first presented by Raymond at the Linux Kongress on May 27, 1997, in Würzburg, Germany, and was published as the second chapter of the sametitled book in 1999. The illustration on the cover of the book is a 1913 painting by Lyubov Popova titled ''Composition with Figures'' and belongs to the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery. The book was released under the Open Publication License v2.0 in 1999. Central thesis The software essay contrasts two different free software development models: * The ''cathedral'' model, in which source code is available with each ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Bug
A software bug is a design defect ( bug) in computer software. A computer program with many or serious bugs may be described as ''buggy''. The effects of a software bug range from minor (such as a misspelled word in the user interface) to severe (such as frequent crashing). In 2002, a study commissioned by the US Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that "software bugs, or errors, are so prevalent and so detrimental that they cost the US economy an estimated $59 billion annually, or about 0.6 percent of the gross domestic product". Since the 1950s, some computer systems have been designed to detect or auto-correct various software errors during operations. History Terminology ''Mistake metamorphism'' (from Greek ''meta'' = "change", ''morph'' = "form") refers to the evolution of a defect in the final stage of software deployment. Transformation of a ''mistake'' committed by an analyst in the early stages of the softw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linus's Law
In software development, Linus's law is the assertion that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". The law was formulated by Eric S. Raymond in his essay and book ''The Cathedral and the Bazaar'' (1999), and was named in honor of Linus Torvalds. A more formal statement is: "Given a large enough beta-tester and co- developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone." Presenting the code to multiple developers with the purpose of reaching consensus about its acceptance is a simple form of software reviewing. Researchers and practitioners have repeatedly shown the effectiveness of reviewing processes in finding bugs and security issues. Validity In ''Facts and Fallacies about Software Engineering,'' Robert Glass refers to the law as a "mantra" of the open source movement, but calls it a fallacy due to the lack of supporting evidence and because research has indicated that the rate at which additional bugs are uncovered does ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hofstadter's Law
Hofstadter's law is a self-referential adage, coined by Douglas Hofstadter in his book ''Gödel, Escher, Bach, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'' (1979) to describe the widely experienced difficulty of accurately estimating the time it will take to complete tasks of substantial complexity:''Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid''. 20th anniversary ed., 1999, p. 152. . The law is often cited by programmers in discussions of techniques to improve productivity, such as ''The Mythical Man-Month'' or extreme programming. History In 1979, Hofstadter introduced the law in connection with a discussion of Computer chess, chess-playing computers, which at the time were continually being beaten by Best chess players, top-level human players, despite outpacing humans in depth of recursion (computer science), analysis. Hofstadter wrote: In 1997, the chess computer Deep Blue (chess computer), Deep Blue became the first to beat a human champion by Deep Blue versus Garry ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conway's Law
Conway's law describes the link between communication structure of organizations and the systems they design. It is named after the computer scientist and programmer Melvin Conway, who introduced the idea in 1967. His original wording was: The law is based on the reasoning that in order for a product to function, the authors and designers of its component parts must communicate with each other in order to ensure compatibility between the components. Therefore, the technical structure of a system will reflect the social boundaries of the organizations that produced it, across which communication is more difficult. In colloquial terms, it means complex products end up "shaped like" the organizational structure they are designed in or designed for. The law is applied primarily in the field of software architecture, though Conway directed it more broadly and its assumptions and conclusions apply to most technical fields. Interpretations The law is, in a strict sense, only about ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Code Refactoring
In computer programming and software design, code refactoring is the process of restructuring existing source code—changing the '' factoring''—without changing its external behavior. Refactoring is intended to improve the design, structure, and/or implementation of the software (its '' non-functional'' attributes), while preserving its functionality. Potential advantages of refactoring may include improved code readability and reduced complexity; these can improve the source code's maintainability and create a simpler, cleaner, or more expressive internal architecture or object model to improve extensibility. Another potential goal for refactoring is improved performance; software engineers face an ongoing challenge to write programs that perform faster or use less memory. Typically, refactoring applies a series of standardized basic ''micro-refactorings'', each of which is (usually) a tiny change in a computer program's source code that either preserves the behavior of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
