I have my theory of what the future of software development should be. Some years in the future I may write that down, but I’d rather write the code to make it happen. In the meantime here are the most interesting pages on the subject I found in my wanderings today:
- The Future of Agile Software Development at targetprocess.com. This one is on the lengthy side, but well worth the read. The short of it is that time to market, product marketability, and software quality and craftsmanship all matter in the long term. Of course few companies have a long term outlook these days.
- Crap Code inevitable? Rumblings from ACCU. from Uncle Bob. This one is dismaying as I’ve observed the trend in decreasing software quality and craftsmanship, but for someone to actually do a talk about this being the future…well that’s just craptastic.
- The Future of Software Development at readwrite.com.
- The Future of Software Development at crisp.se.
The Future of Software Development at aranya.com made use of a construction analogy and the feedback is sent them on this was:
There are a number of flaws in the using building construction as an analogy for business software development. In that analogy the computers and operating systems business software runs on is the equivalent of the land under a building. While not all land will provide stable support for thousands of years, much of it will. On the other hand the computers and operating systems business software runs on is unlikely to be around in a decade or two and the operating system will be patched a number of times. When a building is renovated or remodeled this usually doesn’t involve making additions or changes to the buildings foundation or superstructure, where as changes to business software frequently involve making additions to its architecture and changes are not uncommon.
A better analogy may be constructing a ship and then expanding its capacity and upgrading its equipment while it is operating at sea without diverting around bad weather or mine fields.
Josh Heitzman on Codecrafting 