📝Essential vs. accidental in software development

source

Brooks₁₉₉₅

The essence of software development is the specification, design and testing of conceptual constructs and that takes the most time and effort. The actual coding and verification is easier and are accidental.

Brooks argues that concentrating on improving coding does not attach the essence and thus cannot give 10x improvement.

See also

• Reusable off-the-shelf software components attack the essence of software development. Turned out that 10x improvement was possible and was brought by reusable components.