Greg Wilson - What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It's True

[StefanHoutzager]

Entertaining talk:

Greg Wilson - What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We...

[StefanHoutzager]

There is a book also: Making Software [Book]

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?

[Fl4m3Ph03n1x]

Amazing talk, it sells the book really well at least for me!
With much much emphasis on evidence I have to ask: Have you read the book? Do you know anyone who has?

I would really like some opinions on it, although 624 pages seems a little bit too hard to digest for me

[StefanHoutzager]

Aston set this to “opinion-piece” but in my opinion it is not, the talk is about evidence-based development (contrary to opinion based development, haha). Opinions about the book / talk you can find with google.
I have not read the book. The (complete iirc) contents of the book are also readable when you search for it on google.

[StefanHoutzager]

Anyone on quorum (just read about it), an “evidence-oriented programming language”?

Slides%20for%20Usability%20of%20Programming%20Languages%20SIG%20at%20CHI%202016.pdf

Her some opinions: http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?t=113225

And a study, The extent of empirical evidence that could inform evidence-based design of programming languages : a systematic mapping study | Semantic Scholar

How much empirical research there is that could guide a programming language
design process to result in a language as useful to the programmer as possible?
That is the question I consider in this licentiate thesis, recognizing that such empirical
research has not often been taken into account in language design. Answering
that question properly required me to conduct an over three years long
systematic mapping study, which I now report in this thesis […].
There is clearly some empirical evidence on the efficacy of language design decisions that could inform evidence-based programming language design; however, it is rather sparse. Significant bodies of research seem to exist only of handful of design decisions."