Category: General software engineering

The Mythical Man-Month Keeps on Giving

June 20, 2011 Posted by Karl Beecher under General software engineering
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I’ve recently been re-reading Fred Brooks’s The Mythical Man-Month for something like the fourth or fifth time. It’s one of those textbooks that’s so well-written and a joy to read it becomes a work of literature. It’s also a book that keeps on giving. Every time I read it I seem to get something new… read more

“Why can’t it work like a TV?”

April 13, 2011 Posted by Karl Beecher under General software engineering
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The research of Andrew Tanenbaum (who, like me, is based in a “Free” university, but his is “Vrije” where mine is “Freie”) has long involved computer operating systems, and he reserves many disparaging opinions about their general state. He regards a number of common OS concepts as obsolete, be they file systems largely unchanged since… read more

ReviewBoard: Indispensable and Rather Spiffy

February 22, 2011 Posted by Karl Beecher under General software engineering
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Code inspection is demonstrably one of the most powerful tools for preventing defects in software. For our own part, we who produce Saros have an inspection policy, whereby all but the most trivial changes committed to the version control system (VCS) must gather a minimum of two approving votes before being allowed. But how do… read more