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Why making software is so difficult

Published: 05 August 2014 Publication History

Abstract

This paper develops a metaphor that expresses what is so difficult about software production. The purpose of the metaphor is to be applicable to real-world software production situations, especially on larger or more complex projects, where decisions are made in ways that neglect some of the aspects of software production that make it so difficult, especially that seeing how to solve a problem can be immensely difficult to do from the beginning and as a result one sometimes has to abandon a whole approach and start again. The use of the metaphor is justified with reference to related literature and by application to certain characteristic situations.

References

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Fowler, M. 2004. http://martinfowler.com/bliki/MetaphoricQuestioning.html.
[2]
McConnell, S. 2004. Code Complete, Second Edition. Microsoft Press Redmond. 5. DOI= http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1096143.
[3]
Reynolds, J. 2008. Some thoughts on teaching programming and programming languages. SIGPLAN Notices 43, 11 (November 2008), 108. DOI= http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1480828.1480852.
[4]
Fowler, M. 2005. http://martinfowler.com/articles/newMethodology.html.
[5]
Oggunnaike, B. and Ray, W. 1994. Process Dynamics, Modelling and Control. Oxford University Press.
[6]
Schwaber, K. and Beedle, M. 2001. Agile Software Development with SCRUM. Prentice Hall. 24--25.

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes
ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes  Volume 39, Issue 4
July 2014
72 pages
ISSN:0163-5948
DOI:10.1145/2632434
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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 05 August 2014
Published in SIGSOFT Volume 39, Issue 4

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Author Tags

  1. agile
  2. design
  3. development
  4. estimation
  5. lifecycle
  6. waterfall

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