Optimize for Understanding
Most software development books focus on writing code. After all, that’s what we programmers do: write code.
I thought that was our main job until I read Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering [Gla92]. Its author, Robert Glass, convincingly argues that maintenance is the most important phase in the software development lifecycle. Somewhere between 40 and 80 percent of a typical project’s total costs go toward maintenance. What do we get for all this money? Glass estimates that close to 60 percent of the changes are genuine enhancements, not just bug fixes.
These enhancements come about because we have a better understanding of the final product. Users spot areas that can be improved and make feature requests. ...
Get Your Code as a Crime Scene now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
