Many claims are made about how certain tools, technologies, and practices improve software development. But which claims are verifiable, and which are merely wishful thinking? In this book, leading thinkers such as Steve McConnell, Barry Boehm, and Barbara Kitchenham offer essays that uncover the truth and unmask myths commonly held among the software development community. Their insights may surprise you.

• Are some programmers really ten times more productive than others?
• Does writing tests first help you develop better code faster?
• Can code metrics predict the number of bugs in a piece of software?
• Do design patterns actually make better software?
• What effect does personality have on pair programming?
• What matters more: how far apart people are geographically, or how far apart they are in the org chart?

Contributors include:

Jorge Aranda



Tom Ball



Victor R. Basili



Andrew Begel



Christian Bird



Barry Boehm



Marcelo Cataldo



Steven Clarke



Jason Cohen



Robert DeLine



Madeline Diep



Hakan Erdogmus



Michael Godfrey



Mark Guzdial



Jo E. Hannay



Ahmed E. Hassan



Israel Herraiz



Kim Sebastian Herzig



Cory Kapser



Barbara Kitchenham



Andrew Ko



Lucas Layman



Steve McConnell



Tim Menzies



Gail Murphy



Nachi Nagappan



Thomas J. Ostrand



Dewayne Perry



Marian Petre



Lutz Prechelt



Rahul Premraj



Forrest Shull



Beth Simon



Diomidis Spinellis



Neil Thomas



Walter Tichy



Burak Turhan



Elaine J. Weyuker



Michele A. Whitecraft



Laurie Williams



Wendy M. Williams



Andreas Zeller



Thomas Zimmermann