Text

The problem with software :why smart engineers write bad code

---

An industry insider explains why there is so much bad software - and why academia doesn't teach programmers what industry wants them to know. Why is software so prone to bugs? So vulnerable to viruses? Why are software products so often delayed, or even canceled? Is software development really hard, or are software developers just not that good at it? In The Problem with Software , Adam Barr examines the proliferation of bad software, explains what causes it, and offers some suggestions on how to improve the situation. For one thing, Barr points out, academia doesn't teach programmers what they actually need to know to do their jobs: how to work in a team to create code that works reliably and can be maintained by somebody other than the original authors. As the size and complexity of commercial software have grown, the gap between academic computer science and industry has widened. It's an open secret that there is little engineering in software engineering, which continues to rely not on codified scientific knowledge but on intuition and experience. Barr, who worked as a programmer for more than twenty years, describes how the industry has evolved, from the era of mainframes and Fortran to today's embrace of the cloud. He explains bugs and why software has so many of them, and why today's interconnected computers offer fertile ground for viruses and worms. The difference between good and bad software can be a single line of code, and Barr includes code to illustrate the consequences of seemingly inconsequential choices by programmers. Looking to the future, Barr writes that the best prospect for improving software engineering is the move to the cloud. When software is a service and not a product, companies will have more incentive to make it good rather than "good enough to ship."OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

---

Availability

No copy data

Detail Information

Series Title

-

Call Number

-

Publisher

: The MIT Press., 2018

Collation

1 online resource (320 pages).

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

9780262348201

Classification

NONE

Content Type

text

Media Type

computer

Carrier Type

online resource

Edition

-

Subject(s)

Computer software
Computer programmers

Specific Detail Info

-

Statement of Responsibility

by Adam Barr.

Other Information

Cataloger

bonie

Source

-

Validator

-

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/4134/The-Problem-with-SoftwareWhy-Smart-Engineers-Write

Journal Volume

-

Journal Issue

-

Subtitle

-

Parallel Title

-

Other version/related

File Attachment

Comments

---

You must be logged in to post a comment