The Problem With Software: Why Smart Engineers Write Bad Code (The MIT Press)

The Science of Computing: Shaping a Discipline,

“Separate the code that uses an object from the code that creates an object.”

it, the book taught me the dictionary. The rest of it, the bulk of what I learned about software engineering—how to split a big problem into smaller ones, how to connect the pieces together, how to figure out why it didn’t work, and how to decide when it was finished—I figured out on my own by trial and error, and everybody else in the class figure

The software industry has evolved in just a couple of generations, leaving little time to reflect on how things are done.

Despite graduating with a degree in computer science, I was sorely lacking in the wisdom that I would eventually acquire, through experience, during my career as a programmer. And it’s not just me: essentially all programmers working today were self-taught. The people who designed the Internet were self-taught, those who architected Windows were se

Unfortunately, as Parnas put it, “[Programmers] have been fed so many ‘silver bullets’ that they don’t believe anything anymore.”12

Nobody is going to assume that the same bridge design, with just a few modifications, will handle twice as much distance or weight,

This institutionalized acceptance of shoddiness is one of the most shameful aspects of software engineering. Software bugs are not inevitable, but trying to write software that never crashes is a nongoal, as they say, for the current crop of programmers.

The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.”