In 1986, Fred Brooks, the author of the famous book “The mythical Man-month” released an essay called “No Silver Bullet – Essence and Accident in Software Engineering”.
In this essay, Brooks tried to answer the question if we would see a ten-fold increase in developer productivity in the following decade, that is from 1986 to 1996. For this, he analyzed what it is that makes software difficult.
The framework he uses is based on Aristoteles’ distinction between essential and accidental difficulty. Applying this framework, he predicted that no improvements fo an order of magnitude will be possible.
Brooks’ essay was widely discussed which lead to continuous re-evaluation of the prediction until now.
The talk will introduce the original ideas and then will describe the evolution of how our industry thought about this topic over the decades.
Today, we have new LLM-based tools in place that promise to challenge Brooks’ assumptions.
Eventually, the talk tries to apply Brooks’ framework on today’s situation and the author’s answer to the question if we will see a tenfold increase in developer productivity is still “NO” but with a lot of question marks and disclaimers.
After a physics degree at TU Wien, I started working as Software Engineer. Over the years, I covered multiple roles as Team Lead, Solution Architect, Presales engineer and individual contributor. Currently I am leading a team of engineering coaches at a big Austrian bank. I love to talk and write about Software Engineering topics but also I am quite passionate about the interfaces between IT, organisations and the impact on people who are the most important reason for their existence.
