{"id":7221,"date":"2016-08-18T00:24:28","date_gmt":"2016-08-18T04:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=7221"},"modified":"2016-08-18T00:24:28","modified_gmt":"2016-08-18T04:24:28","slug":"some-aphorisms-on-software-development-methodology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=7221","title":{"rendered":"Some aphorisms on software development methodology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The net benefit of having anything that can be called a software development methodology is in inverse proportion to the quality of your developers &#8211; and possibly inverse-squared.<\/p>\n<p>Any software-development methodology works well on sufficiently small projects, but all scale very badly to large ones.  The good ones scale slightly less badly.<\/p>\n<p>One thing all methodologies tagged &#8220;agile&#8221; have in common is that they push developers away from the median.  Competent developers work better; mediocre developers don&#8217;t change; incompetent ones get worse.<\/p>\n<p>Software metrics have their uses.  Unfortunately, their principal use is to create the illusion that you know what&#8217;s going on.<\/p>\n<p>Structured development methodologies have their uses, too.  Unfortunately, their principal use is to create an illusion of control.<\/p>\n<p>Trust simple, crude metrics over complex ones because the simple ones are less brittle.  KLOC is best, though a poor best.<\/p>\n<p>Agile development is efficient only in environments where the cost of flag days is low. Otherwise, slow down, and take time to think and write about your architecture.<\/p>\n<p>Good programmers are difficult to control; great ones are nearly impossible to control. Different methodologies require different kinds and degrees of control; match them to your developers wisely.<\/p>\n<p>Process is not a good substitute for judgment; when you have to use it as one, your project is probably too large.  Sometimes this is unavoidable, but don&#8217;t fool yourself about what that will cost you.<\/p>\n<p>The difference between O(n**2) and O(n log n) really matters.  It&#8217;s why lots of small teams working coordinated small projects works better than one big team building a monolith.<\/p>\n<p>A million dollars is roughly a 55-gallon oil drum full of five-dollar bills. Large-scale software development is such a difficult and lossy process that it&#8217;s like setting fire to several of these oil drums and hoping a usable product flutters out of the smoke.  If this drives you to despair, find a different line of work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The net benefit of having anything that can be called a software development methodology is in inverse proportion to the quality of your developers &#8211; and possibly inverse-squared. Any software-development methodology works well on sufficiently small projects, but all scale very badly to large ones. The good ones scale slightly less badly. One thing all&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=7221\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Some aphorisms on software development methodology<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7222,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7221\/revisions\/7222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}