"The author knows whereof he speaks. His material is sound, up-to-date, and appropriate. Robert N. Britcher has inside knowledge on one of the most dramatic software stories of our time." --Robert L. Glass President, Computing Trends What really goes on inside the world of software development? How do straightforward projects with well-defined goals mutate into large-scale disasters? How do personalities, ambitions, work environments, and time and cost limitations impact the creation of software? In a book that is both personal and technical, Robert N. Britcher brings to life the culture and infrastructure of software development. Combining history, characters, dialogue, memoirs, and technical information, he describes software development's evolution from the early systems of the 1960s and 1970s to today's high expectations for technical achievement, timeliness, and profit. Using the FAA's Advanced Automation System--one of the largest and most spectacular computing failures in the history of the field--as a backdrop, the author draws on his first-hand experiences to illuminate the reasons why software projects succeed or fail. He examines theories of programming, the process of design, and the methods by which code is written and tested. In addition, Britcher discusses the human element, decrying the "impossible profession" and describing the daily experiences of "life on the project." Looking at the current software development environment, The Limits of Software explores how technology changes methods and how today's market demands affect software development. The book also examines the many forces behind the current push for the development of the "one great system." In this extraordinary book, Britcher offers a long-standing insider's perspective on the past and present of the computer industry, complete with its many foibles and achievements. He looks to the future with both optimism and trepidation, hoping that the industry can accomplish real gains while reaching for worthwhile goals. 0201433230B04062001
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About the Author
Robert N. Britcher is retired from IBM. The author of numerous articles and papers on software, he teaches software, systems engineering, and management at Johns Hopkins University. 0201433230AB04062001
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I can't believe how hard it has been for me to write a foreword for this book. Normally, I do my homework on the subject I'm to write about; then I sit down at my word processor, and the words seem to flow from my mind to my fingertips. But not this time.
This is no ordinary book. And it deserves an extraordinary foreword. That's the problem, I believe. It's hard to commit yourself to doing something extraordinary, and then just sit down and have it happen.
Why is this not an ordinary book? Because Bob Britcher is not an ordinary writer. This book is not like anything else you've ever read on the subject of computing. It's part storytelling, part history, part art, part science, part philosophy, part logic--all entwined around the subject of computing and software. To be honest, I don't know whether or not you'll like this book. But I hope you'll be curious enough to give it a try. In the end, you may come to love Britcher's writing, as I do. He may well be the only Renaissance man writing in the computing field.
What's in the book? A collection of anecdotes. A collection of facts and opinions. Some thoughts on the origins of the computing field. Some thoughts on where the computing field is going now. Personal insights on computing's foibles and computing's achievements. Personal insights on one of the largest and most spectacular computing failures in the history of the field.
Britcher was a programmer on the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Advanced Automation System (AAS), which he calls "the greatest debacle in the history of organized work." He describes in fascinating insider detail the many-faceted failures of that doomed project, coming to the conclusion that the project "brought out the worst in all of us, the thousands who worked on it . . . its atmosphere was slavish and mindless . . . we learned nothing from it."
So this is a book about a particular failed project, right? Well, no. There's far more to it than that. Take Britcher's semi-imaginary playmates, Harry and Clinton, foils through whom Britcher speaks to us readers with sometimes outrageous and sometimes poignant belief sets that, one suspects, are not quite his own or that he is not quite ready to claim. And yet, as time passes and we keep turning the pages of the book, Harry especially becomes a dominant character, and in the final chapter he becomes a tragic figure; we readers find ourselves saddened by a character who we knew was not quite real but who we sense symbolizes what Britcher may feel is the encroaching cloud of darkness over this new age of technology.
Oh, and those wonderful stories of Britcher's--the computer that melted one night, known ever after as the "crispy critter"; the program listing that disappeared into a garbage dumpster and had to be retrieved. Or the wonderful images--Britcher being shown an early windowing system, where in one window "the protagonist [in a movie being shown there] was sucking the blood out of some innocent, while [in another window] I contemplated my next sales call."
In the final analysis, I think I'll remember best the times Britcher shares with us about building software. "Developing software correctly is difficult. Developing vaccines and medicines without side effects is difficult. . . . Neither enterprise will benefit from shortcuts."
It's time to bring this foreword to a close. It wasn't easy to write. I'm not sure it does justice to Britcher's book. What I hope I've accomplished here is to raise your curiosity to an extremely high level, high enough to cause you to proceed eagerly into the rest of the book. I think you'll be glad you did.
--Robert L. Glass, Fall 1998
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An analysis of a major success and a major failure,
By Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)
This review is from: The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives (Paperback)
The same task has produced what is arguably the greatest triumph as well as the greatest failure in software development. Air traffic control is a task where 24/7/365 (functional 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year) must be a law rather than a mantra. The national air traffic control computer system known as the 9020 was written using punched cards and is roughly 500,000 lines of code. Despite all the noise about problems and obsolescence, it has scaled up so well that it is used to control several times the number of flights that it did when it was developed in the seventies. The project to replace it, called the Advanced Automation System, cost several billion dollars and yielded nothing usable, although it did make the developers a great deal of money. Within these two extreme bookends there are several lessons to be learned and that is the point of this book.The author worked on the 9020 system and spends a great deal of time ruminating on how things were, from coding to the personalities of those who built it. Packed within this is one clear lesson. In all successful software projects, there is a small, core group of people who do the bulk of the true work. Enlarge that core, either by increasing the numbers or infiltrating it with bureaucracy, and the chances of failure plummet. This is the conclusion reached by the author in his analysis of why the Advanced Automation System failed. The secondary lesson is that the very stability of the air traffic control system makes it fragile and difficult to change. There is no easy way to make changes to the system, where the simple movement of a control knob several inches can create problems. There are lessons for developers sprinkled throughout the book, although it is sometimes necessary to read carefully to find them. Presented in the form of a non-sequential journal, the flow sometimes goes sideways, but it nearly always manages to make a valid point.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beautifully written book.,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives (Paperback)
The Limits of Software is eccentric and eloquent. I've never read anything quite like it. Somehow the author has mixed amusing stories, characters and dialogue, and technical material in the right proportion: the book is not just informative, at times it is moving. The book, at 200 pages, reads like a 20-page article; but it lingers like a fine novel.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent narrative of software development issues.,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives (Paperback)
This work by the author provides an excellent narrative on software development issues from the perspective of those actually doing the development. The experiences described are typical of those lived by many software developers. The book is easy to read and captures the reader in the intensity of the authors experiences.
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