Edward Yourdon
According to Edward Yourdon, software development may soon move out of the U.S. into software factories in a dozen countries unless U.S. software organizations exploit the key software technologies examined in this publication. Here Yourdon takes a close look at how U.S. companies can implement object oriented methods, CASE tools, software quality assurance, structured methods, software metrics, and re-engineering.
If we stand back and take a look at a broader view of the software industry this book is well worth our attention. This book takes a detailed look as to why the American software industry was in such a mess and seemed unable to compete with the software shops of the Asia and the Pacific Rim countries. It explains how, in the consumer software market, we’ve learned to accept “Good Enough” Software. “Good Enough” Software depends on a considered tradeoff among schedule (delivery date), functionality (feature richness), and quality (absence of defects).
In Decline and Fall of the American Programmer, the author makes a case that “The American programmer is about to share the fate of the dodo bird.” He goes on to explain that software written in the U.S. costs too much and is of low quality. His claim is that American programmers could be replaced by lower cost foreign programmers much in the same way manufacturing jobs have been exported to areas with lower labor costs. He also claims that for nearly 30 years, we have known that tenfold improvement in software productivity and quality are readily achievable without magic or silver bullet technologies. The methods and techniques for achieving these improvements have been widely published in the U.S., but we don’t pay much attention to our own preaching. According to the author the typical reaction from American software professionals falls into three categories: (a) we don’t see this phenomenon happening in our town, or (b) we don’t see any evidence that those offshore programmers are any better than we are, or (c) how could the end-users in our company possibly deal with software people 10,000 miles away? Yourdon presented some strong arguments against these opinions when he wrote Decline and Fall of the American Programmer, and those arguments are still valid today.
The Term Paper on Software Reuse
Abstract Effective reuse of software products is reportedly increasing productivity, saving time, and reducing cost of software development. Historically, software reuse focused on repackaging and reapplying of code modules, data structures or entire applications in the new software projects (Prieto-Diaz 1994). Recently, however, it has been acknowledgedas beneficial to redeploy software ...
I appreciate the arguments Yourdon puts forward on behalf of new approaches in software management, because it had triggered some great changes in the software industry, few years after publishing his book. Just remember a few of the impressive product at the time, like the Apple Newton, or Microsoft Windows NT, or the IBM Thinkpad, or Lotus Notes. The innovation of the American hardware/software industry has continued to lead the world. Three years after Yourdon’s best seller the Decline and Fall of the American Programmer, he wrote the Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer. In that Yourdon reviews the new landscape, helping programmers understand the new technologies, industries and applications they should be involved with the end of the 20th century.
Despite the radical message, Decline and Fall of the American Programmer is an excellent discussion of the human factors, processes, measurements, and tools that go into making good software. This book discusses the SEI Capability Maturity Model, various software development methodologies including Waterfall and Spiral, software quality assurance, and Object Oriented programming. It is a good overview of many of the innovations in software development practices.
The Dissertation on Effect of Foreign Car Companies on the American Auto Industry
The development of the automotive assembly line by Henry Ford in 1908 increased the success of the American car industry exponentially, helping it become one of the most prominent industries in the world. The increased manufacturing efficiency and affordability of the Ford Model-T made the American industry the first industry to mass produce affordable automobiles. Another technological ...
