Books

The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives

Average customer rating:

Lessons Learned
A work of art
pompous joke
Wrong category.
Should be read inside and outside the field of computingl

The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives
Robert N. Britcher
Manufacturer: Addison-Wesley Pub (Sd)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

High-Tech | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0201433230

Customer Reviews:

Lessons Learned.......2003-08-05

Mr. Britcher has written a fine book that at times is a little difficult to follow where he is going. Having worked on our National Air Traffic Control System myself for nearly 25 years I could relate too many of his stories. Software engineering by it very nature can bog down very quickly in the tools used to arrive at a do-able solution. His best points are about the difficulty of rewriting something writen so well and back in the days when you had to sweat using too much storage. That being the case the system is easy to maintain and has scaled "up" countless times over the last three deades. The system was re-platformed in 1998 onto hardware that offered five nines of reliability. Normally when you place an operating system and applications on the hardware the total system reliability suffers.In case of the system Mr. Britcher cites as the the target for replacement reliability stayed at five nines on a system 24x7x365, as it does at this very instant.

I only wish every FAA manager would read Mr. Britchers book because they are about to commit the same mistake they did on AAS only this time it is called ERAM. Large corporations evolve systems, ie Microsoft Windows Operating System built one release on the other. The government on the other hand replaces systems because that becomes a "program" and employes thousands of government workers.

Unfortunitly everything Mr. Britcher writes about AAS is about to happen again on ERAM. With us the American tax payers the big losers and a few corporations who get paid no matter what, the big winners.

Thank you Mr. Britcher for putting into words what I see happening around me every working day, it is a very timely read.

Bill Capo

A work of art.......2002-02-02

This is one of the finest books on any subject I have ever had the pleasure of reading. In fact, a savvy publisher might have taken the words in this book, combined them with some high-quality photography, and converted it into a glossy-paged coffee table book without much effort. But alas, we lucky few who have read it will have to do without the stage-dressing, and console ourselves with the beauty of the words themselves.

This certainly isn't a "How-To" book, or a quick punch-list to make you a better manager. Rather, it is a thin volume of lyric beauty; a poem to the design and management of software. I would have thought our industry too young yet for a work like this, but Robert Britcher has cobbled together flashes of life from the computing industry ranging from the 60's through the late 90's into a sum larger than its parts.

Will reading this book make you a better manager or engineer? I think so -- if only by helping to create a shared history of the software industry, and a vivid and visceral set of lessons from the front lines.

pompous joke.......2001-09-24

This book is like the emperor's new clothes -- if you aren't carried away by the brilliantly obscure allusions, you must be poorly educated. Ok. I'll be the one stupid enough to say "uh, excuse me, but...". I bought this book believing the title was serious, and that the blurb (and forward) by Robert Glass had some meaning. I'm actually embarrassed by how far into the book I got before I finally realized I'd been totally "had". I thought the obscure references must have more meaning than I was literate enough to get. In fact, there is no real content to this book. There's nothing but tease. It flits around, goes off on silly tangents, but never actually gets to any meat about "the limits of software". I've bought a lot of computer science-related books from Addison Wesley over the last 30 years, and I'm very surprised, and disappointed, that they published this tripe.

Wrong category........2000-04-21

I worked on the FAA's Advanced Automation System with the author since 1984. (So did several thousand other very bright people.) The author has a few valid points about the difficulties of managing a large hardware, software, and human, integration project. However, if the book had been presented as a fictionalized account or as his personal memoir I would have less difficulty with it. I think that it is misleading to present it as a book with technical merit or validity. It's just one person's view of what happened.

Should be read inside and outside the field of computingl.......2000-01-18

At one level, this is a wonderful book about engineering, but there is more to it than that. It's about how we behave in the face of technology, especially those of us who are deeply involved in it. The book is important; I hope it is discovered.

Average customer rating:

The Limits Of Software: People, Projects, And Perspectives
Glass , Britcher
Manufacturer: Addison-Wesley Pub (Sd)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OP5416

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