Customer Reviews

201 Principles of Software Development

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It does, as far as your life as a software engineer or manager thereof goes. This book spells out everything, from getting started on a project to maintaining it after release.

Each principle is given as a heading, each on a separate page, and every one of them is true. A short explanation follows each one. Other principles that relate are pointed out. But the true value is the footer on each page. It is a pointer to the literature where you can find the principle in question discussed definitively.

Ultimately, this book functions as a directory/index to every aspect of software engineering. If you need to know a phone number, you look it up in the phone book. If you need to know something about software engineering practices -- you can look it up here.

This manual is more than simply a collection of maxims and homilies about software development. Although the bulk of the text is devoted to telling us things that we probably already know, its worth as a database of references almost eclipses the value of its own text. An invaluable bibliography, especially for students in this area.

This book summarizes 40 years of software's best practices into 240 pages. Short, sweet, to the point, and incredibly valuable. High recommended. I browse it about once a week and pull out a gem or two every time.

Highly recommended for all levels of software development organizations, as well as *anyone* who is considering hiring a consultant to develop a software system - including those who may install and maintain your network. A must-read so you'll know what to ask for. I'm recommending that our company us this as the guide for our software quality initiative.

Each principle is a sentence presented on single page followed by an explanation that is frequently only one paragraph long. This the book's virtue: it is written so well and its principles are so carefully chosen that this format delivers a surprising wealth of useful information.

In addition, the principles are intelligently cross referenced so that reading a single principle will allow the reader to easily discover several other important related ideas. The principles are also indexed in an excellent reference section at the end of book, which links the principles to the original sources.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that this is also an attractive book, a rarity and a blessing since it will likely remain on the bookshelf years after other books have lost their relevance.

This is a very good book for revising, or better to keep you with everything fresh in memory. Most of the tips are those that when you read you say "I know that" or "That's obvious" but the point is exactly that, to remind you of the 201 obvious things that you should be doing on daily basis at work but your not.

As a student of Software Engineering, I wish my courses were based on the concepts in this book. The concepts aren't new, but it is the first time I've seen them bundled up in such a nice little package. Each page has a principle. And the sources for each principle are cited. I only spotted one mistake, the author confuses verification and validation.

Wisdom...there are some gems here in te book. This should on the table top of all Software Engineers and Leaders of Sofwtware Development

There is strong evidence to support the claim that software development is the most difficult endeavor humans have ever embarked on. Humans are hard or perhaps a better term is soft wired to make errors. It is this capacity for errors that allows us to develop new things and improve performance. Unfortunately, software development is extremely precise, which is in opposition to how humans generally function. Therefore, it is practically impossible to develop large-scale software projects that are error free.
The solution is to manage the errors so that the types of errors are skewed toward the less serious and the probability of serious errors is reduced to an achievable minimum. This requires the development of a process, which is constructed from a set of fundamental principles. 201 of the most effective principles are briefly described in this book. All are at most a couple of paragraphs in length, and are self-evident to the experienced coder. However, self-evident does not mean redundant as the pressure to relax a principle can become overwhelming under the rush to complete. Software designers and their managers need constant reminders that short cuts to code creation are misnamed. There is no such thing, yet it is easy to rationalize that your case is different and it will work this time.
This is a book that should become the commandments of software development. Each person in the team should have a copy and when it is suggested that a principle be violated, the appropriate red flag should be raised. By doing that, while the simple problems will still exist, the more complex ones will be avoided.

Alan Davis has brought together a great deal of common sense in this volume. The references are abundant (well over 100) and each message is, as is claimed, independent of just about everything. You can easily find a way to adopt any policy and adapt it to your development environment. It's good for students in the field and probably a good refresher course for developers.