Software Creativity 2.0 - Softcover

Robert L Glass

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0977213315 ISBN 13: 9780977213313

Publisher: Developer.* Books, 2006

Synopsis

"This book is written from a powerfully felt, personal perspective: that software construction is primarily a problem-solving activity; that all problem-solving requires creativity; that software problem-solving is deeply complex, perhaps more deeply complex than any other activity; and that, therefore, software problem-solving requires the ultimate in creativity." --Robert L. Glass, from the Preface In Software Creativity 2.0, acclaimed author Robert L. Glass explores a critical, yet strangely neglected, question: What is the role of creativity in software engineering and computer programming? With his trademark easy-to-read style and practical approach, backed by research and personal experience, Glass takes on a wide range of related angles and implications. To name only a few: * Are discipline and formality at odds with flexibility and agility? * When are control-driven vs. experimentation-driven approaches most effective? * Can we "make creativity happen" in a software organization? * Which is more important, process or product? * How do theory and practice interact in the software field? Can practitioners and academe complement each other more effectively? * Is there a missing link between creativity and software design? * What is the balance of "intellectual" and "clerical" tasks in software work? * Can we still find a place for plain old fun? Revised, updated, and expanded, Software Creativity 2.0 also features a new Foreword by Tom DeMarco, author of Peopleware, and a new Preface by author Robert L. Glass.

About this title

From the Publisher

Dedicated to all the software people trying to change the world.

"...because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do." --Jack Kerouac

From the Author

There's a fundamental conflict in the software world, sometimes taking on the attributes of a war.

On one side, managers search for ways to impose more discipline and control on software builders, and researchers advocate and sometimes seek to mandate formal methods for the same purpose.

On the other side, software builders quietly continue to build software pretty much the way they always have, with freewheeling methods and creative solutions.

"Breakthrough" methods come, linger awhile, and go away, having made little impact on our ability to build software.

Methodologies fragment into variants, programming languages come and go, CASE tools become shelfware, object orientation is forever "next year's goal." The attempts to simplify and routinize the construction of software largely fail, one by one.

What's wrong with this picture? Are we dealing with stubborn practitioners, so stuck in their ways that they are intolerant of all change? That seems to be the view of management and research.

Or are we dealing with ignorant managers and researchers, so caught up in the new that they fail to understand the old? That seems to be the view of practitioners.

The key issue underlying this conflict, I believe, is creativity. If there is little or no need for creativity in building software, then those managers and researchers are right in what they advocate-we can simplify and routinize the work of software. If, on the other hand, creativity is and always will be an essential part of software construction, then those practitioners are right-we will continue to need freewheeling methods and creative solutions. It is this whole collection of issues, standing on this foundation of software creativity, that I hope to address, and perhaps to resolve, in this book. That's why the book is called Software Creativity.

Edition details

• Publisher: Developer.* Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0977213315
• ISBN 13: 9780977213313
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 484