Leprechauns of Software Engineering

I recently read “The leprechauns of software engineering” by Laurent Bossavit ¹. The book goes through a few myths about software engineering and then traces how those myths entered the public consciousness. It was well worth reading for anyone interested in research based software engineering practices. It was primarily useful on how to verify about claims rather than the claims themselves. While I’ve heard of most of the myths - I also heard about them as myths rather than as true claims. It reminded me a lot of “Making Software” ². Core Insights:

• the “Ouroboros effect” is real and present even in academic work. Make it a point to read original sources
• Its relatively easy to trace the lineage of claims and is worth doing so.
• Software Engineering is its own discipline and trying to directly transplant e.g., medical research techniques are not conducive to generating understanding. “It needs to be studied with tools that borrow as much from the social and cognitive sciences as they do from the mathematical theories of computation” (Bossavit. p. 129¹)
• lack of critical thinking and analysis has caused much bad research both within academia and has allowed it to escape into the wild.
• when reading a graph or summary always ask “what exactly does one of these points represent?”

The author also discussed:

• It would be helpful to move away from thinking about “requirements” to thinking about negotiation. In the conclusion the author makes this claim.

I happen to agree with it, but felt it was not supported by the rest of the book