No Silver Bullet
"No Silver Bullet — Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering" is a widely discussed paper on software engineering written by Fred Brooks in 1986. Brooks argues that "there is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order of magnitude improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity." He also states that "we cannot expect ever to see two-fold gains every two years" in software development, like there is in hardware development.
Brooks makes a distinction between accidental complexity and essential complexity, and asserts that most of what software engineers now do is devoted to the essential, so shrinking all the accidental activities to zero will not give an order-of-magnitude improvement. Brooks advocates addressing the essential parts of the software process. While Brooks insists that there is no one silver bullet, he believes that a series of innovations attacking essential complexity could lead to significant (perhaps greater than tenfold in a ten-year period) improvements.
The article, and Brooks's own reflections on it, "'No Silver Bullet' Refired," can be found in the anniversary edition of The Mythical Man-Month.
Read more about No Silver Bullet: The Argument
Famous quotes containing the words silver and/or bullet:
“It is told that some divorcees, elated by their freedom, pause on leaving the courthouse to kiss a front pillar, or even walk to the Truckee to hurl their wedding rings into the river; but boys who recover the rings declare they are of the dime-store variety, and accuse the throwers of fraudulent practices.”
—Administration in the State of Neva, U.S. public relief program. Nevada: A Guide to the Silver State (The WPA Guide to Nevada)
“Consider his life which was valueless
In terms of employment, hotel ledgers, news files.
Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.
Ask. Was so much expenditure justified
On the death of one so young and so silly
Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?”
—Stephen Spender (1909–1995)