Reviews for Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering (Agile Software Development)

1. Great Book

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, September 12th, 2009

   This is a great book founded in common sense, real life experience and genuine evidence. Most of the rest of the field of software engineering literature is characterised by idealogues and snake oil salesmen. This is the best cure to snake oil.

2. Excellent diversion from work

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, April 12th, 2003

   This book is an excellent diversion from reading text books or doing normal work, but it's conclusions are still highly valid for any project. I found it a humourous read, and for virtually every point made I found my self nodding in agreement.

   I highly recommend lending the book to your boss prior to a personal appraisal, as the first two points are about how worthy good developers are!

   Any software developer should get this book for a bit of light reading, and bring back those memories of past project disasters!

3. Well-written and needed

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, January 12st, 2003

   The reason why I am nothing throwing in all 5 stars is that the books style irritates me a little. I would rather have all the references and sources in an appendix in the end of the book, rather than after each fact & fallacy.

   But that said, the f&f that is shown here are good to be reminded of for almost any programmer. I wonder a bit why a fact stating that COBOL is the best business computer language is needed - true that it may be it is irrelevant and carries not the same weight as other statements in the book (I could add another fact about SNOBOL being the best string-manipulating language etc., but whats the relevance...?).

   The book is part of the eXtreme / pragmatic / agile programming paradigme that we see these years. And true is it that Robert L. Glass doesn't bring that much new stuff - he is referring to his own old books a lot of the time - but from personal experience I have already seen that managers are impressed by the facts stated here.

   So after all: The book should be used to throw in a couple of facts in an argument with a manager. That, or Dilbert...

4. Highly recommended!!!

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2002

   This is a great book! Obviously written be somebody who loves software development but who is amazed at how certain things don't change no matter how fast the tools and technology change around us.

   Each of the facts and fallacies in this book is discussed in some detail, and there are lots of notes and references if you want to follow up. The wrtiting is always clear and very readable. If there's an underlying theme it's "don't believe the hype!". It should be the mantra of everybody involved in software development.

   This is one of the most enjoyable and interesting books on development that I've ever read. Buy it and take what it says to heart.