Software Best Practices

This fact supports Glass' argument that software automation, CASE tools and MDA, isn't currently feasible. There's not a lot of supporting evidence but I believe it too. The single hardest thing to do is decide precisely what to build. This would have to be done up front to automate the construction...

I couldn't agree more. And the first engineer that agrees to that ".. one little thing..." without thinking it through should be tacked to the wall right next to it. This is the central fact of the book, according to Glass. The downstream effects of small changes are so hard to foresee...

Eighty percent of software work is intellectual. A fair amount of it is creative. Little of it is clerical.

For every 25 percent increase in problem complexity, there is a 100% increase in the complexity of the solution. That's not a condition to try to change. That's just the way it is.