Flashes of Panic

The edition of Brooks that we’re using includes “No Silver Bullet,” a 1984(?) essay explaining why the problems facing software engineers were unlikely to go away quickly or soon. (The older the essay gets, the more right he looks.) Brooks’ argument centers on the idea that the dramatic improvements early in the computer era were achievable because they countered “accidental” difficulties, not “essential” ones. Essential difficulties are problems which are inherent to the process of communicating ideas in code; accidental difficulties are inefficiencies embedded in the available tools and the costs of hardware in the early days. Brooks’ contention is that the accidental difficulties were “low-hanging fruit” and were comparatively easy to solve; the remaining essential problems will be harder to solve, and the solutions will offer smaller incremental benefits.

The concept of accidental vs. essential problems is not simple for anyone, and I’m not surprised many of these literal-minded engineers trip over it. But I wonder how many of our people for whom English is not their first language easily understand the concept of a silver bullet?

Also, someone has tagged the book with my first name in Amazon. I don’t know who did it, but it has to stop.

Now Playing: T.B.D. from Throwing Copper by Live