No Silver Bullet Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering
1987/04/01 by Brooks · 3,195 citations
Computer Science · #Algorithm #Computer science #Computer security #History of computing #Programming language #Silver bullet #Software #Software Engineering Techniques and Practices #Software engineering
paper · doi:10.1109/mc.1987.1663532
published in Computer 20(4), 10-19 (IEEE Computer Society)
openalex publication_date 1987/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Abstract
But, as we look to the horizon of a decade hence, we see no silver bullet. There is no single development, in either technology or in management technique, that by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity. In this article, I shall try to show why, by examining both the nature of the software problem and the properties of the bullets proposed.
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