The Making of Software Engineering Myths
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The Making of Software Engineering Myths
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Re: The Making of Software Engineering Myths
#2Can anyone name a finding of software engineering research that isn't folklore? I've looked many times. The field is strikingly weak. It is typified by tiny sample sizes, subjective analysis, and zero replication.
[Edit: deleted mistaken impression here.]
Re: The Making of Software Engineering Myths
#3Can anyone name a finding of software engineering research that isn't folklore? I've looked many times. The field is strikingly weak. It is typified by tiny sample sizes, subjective analysis, and zero replication. [Edit: deleted mistaken impression here.]
"singling out some myths for critique rather than others gives a misleading impression"
Article author here. Agree with your first para, so the above has me puzzled, a bit.
Would you please expand: what impressions do you think the article gives, that are misleading? (And if possible: what do you see or hear that makes you think they are misleading?)
Re: The Making of Software Engineering Myths
#4Can anyone name a finding of software engineering research that isn't folklore? I've looked many times. The field is strikingly weak. It is typified by tiny sample sizes, subjective analysis, and zero replication. [Edit: deleted mistaken impression here.]
Software engineering research is very tough, because despite the formal name, it's a social science, and no two projects are the same. Civil engineering holds up to physics and repeatable tests. No two software projects are the same. They have different teams, training, management structures, technical environments... Similar to psychology, it is very hard to draw rigorous conclusions for the real world, and most lab tests are of oversimplified situations.
I also get Citogenesis. This also gets abused in many fields. Think Cargo Cults, and stories of performance improving every time the lights go on and off, and how we're all evil because people in lab tests electrocute their test subjects.
That said, it is hard for anyone who has been in the world for a while to disbelieve the 10x programmers. We all have met them. They really are that much better. And they really can solve problems that others can't. They may not be better for every situation (Example: Following a structured testing methodology that requires a lot of human input) but they do exist. It would take a lot of evidence to prove that they DON'T.
Re: The Making of Software Engineering Myths
#5Can anyone name a finding of software engineering research that isn't folklore? I've looked many times. The field is strikingly weak. It is typified by tiny sample sizes, subjective analysis, and zero replication. [Edit: deleted mistaken impression here.]
"singling out some myths for critique rather than others gives a misleading impression" Article author here. Agree with your first para, so the above has me puzzled, a bit. Would you please expand: what impressions do you think the article gives, that are misleading? (And if possible: what do you see or hear that makes you think they are misleading?)
Edit: What I said there was rooted in earlier discussions and not the current article. Sorry; my confusion. But I'll leave the explanation of what I meant anyway.
You place so much emphasis on dismantling the 10x claim (writing an entire book about it) rather than software research in general, that an observer might reasonably be left with the impression that there's something more "mythy" about that claim than others. If so, I'd say that's misleading.
Folklore isn't ipso facto false. If folklore gets repeated as persistently as 10x does, I'd say that speaks weakly in its favor. (Please note that I said "weakly".) Because of this, I don't think it's irrational to continue to favor that view, even after debunking those studies. For one thing, the opposite claim is even less supported by data. For another, it fits loosely with my experience and that of others I talk to. Experience in the field may not be controlled measurement, but that doesn't make it rational to dismiss it.
I do think there's something to the 10x claim about individuals; I think interaction between individuals is even more important—100x, one might metaphorically say—and that question is even less amenable to formal study. I doubt that we'll ever see convincing quantitative results on either of these things. Building teams will remain an art, and folklore and myth are the stuff that art is made of.
Re: The Making of Software Engineering Myths
#6Can anyone name a finding of software engineering research that isn't folklore? I've looked many times. The field is strikingly weak. It is typified by tiny sample sizes, subjective analysis, and zero replication. [Edit: deleted mistaken impression here.]
The problem is that nobody is willing to pony up the millions of dollars required to run tests with actual professionals.
Re: The Making of Software Engineering Myths
#7Can anyone name a finding of software engineering research that isn't folklore? I've looked many times. The field is strikingly weak. It is typified by tiny sample sizes, subjective analysis, and zero replication. [Edit: deleted mistaken impression here.]
The problem is that nobody is willing to pony up the millions of dollars required to run tests with actual professionals.
Exactly. The market value of rigorous research on software development isn't high enough for anyone to pay for it.
Re: The Making of Software Engineering Myths
#8Can anyone name a finding of software engineering research that isn't folklore? I've looked many times. The field is strikingly weak. It is typified by tiny sample sizes, subjective analysis, and zero replication. [Edit: deleted mistaken impression here.]
"singling out some myths for critique rather than others gives a misleading impression" Article author here. Agree with your first para, so the above has me puzzled, a bit. Would you please expand: what impressions do you think the article gives, that are misleading? (And if possible: what do you see or hear that makes you think they are misleading?)
While I understand that you are not going to debunk all the myths, I think the article would be much stronger if you at least battered the "10X myth" a bit
Re: The Making of Software Engineering Myths
#9"The trope of 'software as a highly abstract, intellectually demanding, nearly mathematical activity' contributes to a myth of software development as a profession 'naturally' dominated by males: math is the subject of its own interlocking system of tropes, myths and stereotypes that paint it as a manly pursuit."
That logic seems to be all backwards to me. Of course developing software is a highly abstract, intellectually demanding activity. Claiming it’s not is as absurd as claiming women are somehow incapable of doing exactly that.
Re: The Making of Software Engineering Myths
#10Can anyone name a finding of software engineering research that isn't folklore? I've looked many times. The field is strikingly weak. It is typified by tiny sample sizes, subjective analysis, and zero replication. [Edit: deleted mistaken impression here.]
Try "Making Software: What really works and why we believe it".
I'm about halfway thru reading it, some of the findings presented are that TDD studies either aren't very good or give inconclusive results; that a number of code complexity metrics don't predict bug rates any better than file size does; that bug rates are correlated with how well organizational structure matches code structure; and that competent PHP programmers do in fact exist.