After the Gold Rush: Creating a True Profession of Software Engineering
Steve McConnell, a leader in defining software engineering's best practices, asserts that software development is entering a new era. Now's the time, McConnell says, for the industry to take notice and take action--and establish a true profession of software engineering.
Review By: Monique Navai
07/02/2002This book provides a well written engineering guide for applications designers and systems architects. The book delivers many valuable insights on improving development. Early sections of the book compare engineering to the 1840s California Gold Rush by providing clear examples of history repeating itself. This makes the book more interesting, and it is easy to follow the examples and relate them to the world of software development.
The book describes common problems and provides solutions through improving the coding process. It also explains how to use the requirements and design system architecture to support the development and quality of the code with unit testing and debugging. With every piece of history the book becomes more interesting and challenges engineers and developers to improve the quality of coding. The book also addresses scheduling--meeting deadlines while preserving quality standards.
The book also focuses on the team-based nature of successful software development. It defines a team’s role for each stage in the development process, beginning with initial requirements, design, and implementation. This book relates closely to engineers and is written for code developers; it is relevant for any software analyst or designer.
The author is an excellent storyteller. His ability to relate the engineering environment to the California Gold Rush is very effective. This historical angle makes the book more interesting, and the way he has provided the appropriate facts of history is impressive.
As soon as I finished the book, I recommended it to my staff. We have been experiencing many engineering issues, which I was not able to understand clearly until I read this book. The author offers excellent criteria for the success of the quality engineer. I recommend this book to any project manager who does not understand true engineering, and to any developer who is learning to code.
This book offers a process that can help make applications cost less and suffer fewer defects. While I learned more about engineering in this book, I also learned how important my job is as a quality assurance professional.
User Comments
I agree with the review above and have some updates on where things have gone since the book was published.
RIT has graduated their first class of undergraduate software engineers. All 12 got jobs, with the minimum offer in the vicinity of $80k. They are also building a new Software Engineering building. The pipeline for future years looks like it will scale up to 40 a year in 2005. Contact Dr Fernando Naveda ([email protected]) for info on getting students to be co-ops at your company.
The SWEBOK is in its 0.9 version and available for release. If you are interested in where the profession is going, download a copy and use it for reference. If you have subject matter experts in your company, encourage them to participate as reviewers.
The Texas Board of Engineers has a grandfather process to license Software Engineers. I know at least one EDS person who got through the process. 50 other people have done the same. They have started writing the test that will be used to license future engineers that come out of programs like the one at RIT. If you live in Texas, check it out.
Buy this book and give it to friends.
Check out the status of the profession at www.construx.com, which is Steve McConnell's company. They also have a great reading list for people in our profession. Great web site too.
I've probably found an excuse to post this comment on almost every discussion thread here, but I don't need an excuse this time.
IT will never earn the right to called an engineering discipline until we prove that we are capable of building an information infrastructure that is as reliable and as easy to take for granted as plumbing and highways. Surely by now we've all heard the old cliche that if airliners were built the way we build software, no one would live long enough to use their frequent flyer miles.
This book and the accompanying review make this point well and back it up with a lot of excellent suggestions.