Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm going to go on record and say that this is one of the most important books about software development that has been published in the last few years. It's easy for many of us in the industry to complain that software engineering research is years behind practice and that it is hard to construct experiments or perform studies which produce information that is relevant for practitioners, but fact is, there are many things we can learn from published studies.
The editors of this book do a great job of explaining what we can and can not expect from research. They also adopt a very pragmatic mindset, taking the point of view that appropriate practice is highly contextual. Research can provide us with evidence, but not necessarily conclusions.
Beyond the philosophical underpinnings, 'Making Software' outlines research results in a variety of areas. It gives you plenty to think about when considering various approaches on your team. The chapter 'How Effective is Modularization?' is worth the price of the book alone.
I recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn how to think rigorously about practice.

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Many claims are made about how certain tools, technologies, and practices improve software development. But which claims are verifiable, and which are merely wishful thinking? In this book, leading thinkers such as Steve McConnell, Barry Boehm, and Barbara Kitchenham offer essays that uncover the truth and unmask myths commonly held among the software development community. Their insights may surprise you.

Are some programmers really ten times more productive than others?
Does writing tests first help you develop better code faster?
Can code metrics predict the number of bugs in a piece of software?
Do design patterns actually make better software?
What effect does personality have on pair programming?
What matters more: how far apart people are geographically, or how far apart they are in the org chart?

Contributors include:

Jorge Aranda Tom Ball Victor R. Basili Andrew Begel Christian Bird Barry Boehm Marcelo Cataldo Steven Clarke Jason Cohen Robert DeLine Madeline Diep Hakan Erdogmus Michael Godfrey Mark Guzdial Jo E. Hannay Ahmed E. Hassan Israel Herraiz Kim Sebastian Herzig Cory Kapser Barbara Kitchenham Andrew Ko Lucas Layman Steve McConnell Tim Menzies Gail Murphy Nachi Nagappan Thomas J. Ostrand Dewayne Perry Marian Petre Lutz Prechelt Rahul Premraj Forrest Shull Beth Simon Diomidis Spinellis Neil Thomas Walter Tichy Burak Turhan Elaine J. Weyuker Michele A. Whitecraft Laurie Williams Wendy M. Williams Andreas Zeller Thomas Zimmermann