Decline and Fall of the American Programmer

by Edward Yourdon

An overview of software engineering principles, techniques, and tools that draws some controversial conclusions as to the direction of software engineering and the career prospects of today's programmers. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Genres: Nonfiction, Programming, Computers, Technical, Software

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Monzenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

High four. The only reason I can't rate it five stars is that I'm not an expert in computer systems and can't possibly know if the systems are legitimate or still valid, and also the title is a tad misleading. Despite the title being about the decline and fall, it provides such a rich amount of information and advice about many parts of the program development cycle that is still relevant today - from how to care about your programmers, to metrics, to testing, to systems building. Most of the book continues to be useful - and it helps that I agree with the programmer-centric perspective.

[Jeff Keehr · Rating 3 out of 5]

The future is embedded systems and the internet. Forget learning C++; learn Java and become a Webmaster. I give up. (Update: I read this while I was studying Computer Science, hoping to make a career change at age 42. I ended up getting a job in 1997 and worked in C and C++ off and on for about ten years. In 2011, I was laid off and got a new job two months later. I then began to code for the internet. So Yourdon was partly right.)

[Michael R. Hassler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book right before India started become our number outsourcer for programming talent. I used it's prescient wisdom as the basis of competing in my professional software systems consulting career. Reading is fundamental.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this 15 year old book 10 years ago. Yet there is still value in reading much of it today. Yourdon trumpets a wake up call Athat merican programming jobs are at risk to be outsourced in a major way in the 90's.

Well much of that came to pass, but instead of massive programmer joblessness, the dot com bubble and globalism with new markets tempered the downside. Still, the risks and the way to mitigate them still resonate.

He described American programmers as cowboys relative to more regimented practices in India and Asia. The lack of keeping skills up to date is still a problem, though retraining by many after the dot com crash has changed some of this.

Yourdon cites and extensive bookshelf as an example for software professionals. Again, while an old list, many titles are timeless.

And interesting way to look at the transformation of the software industry over the last 15 years. And a warning to many other industries whose skills are facing global competition. A wake up call indeed.

[Ted Rankin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Capability Maturity Model from SEI.

PMM

Peopleware

17 years ago, trends, from structured to Objected Oriented from CASE tools and waterfall project management to agile development, rapid prototyping using delphi, visual basic, and interesting java development, interesting to where the future of www might be.

Kind of a overview of whats going on in development and where it might go.

[Bernie May · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good primer on why discipline and software development are allies.

[Dainius Jocas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprisingly, parts of the book that I liked most were both appendixes. They were about software technologies in India and programmer's bookshelf.