Software Engineering Fundamentals

By David Farley
Jan 23, 2022

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This chapter is from the book 

Modern Software Engineering: Doing What Works to Build Better Software Faster

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Summary

The tools of our trade are often not really what we think they are. The languages, tools, and frameworks that we use change over time and from project to project. The ideas that facilitate our learning and allow us to deal with the complexity of the systems that we create are the real tools of our trade. By focusing on these things, it will help us to better choose the languages, wield the tools, and apply the frameworks in ways that help us do a more effective job of solving problems with software.

Having a “yardstick” that allows us to evaluate these things is an enormous advantage if we want to make decisions based on evidence and data, rather than fashion or guesswork. When making a choice, we should ask ourselves, “does this increase the quality of the software that we create?” measured by the metrics of stability. Or “does this increase the efficiency with which we create software of that quality” measured by throughput. If it doesn’t make either of these things worse, we can pick what we prefer; otherwise, why would we choose to do something that makes either of these things worse?

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