Modern Software Engineering

Modern Software Engineering

Authors

• David Farley
  • Who is David Farley?

How to buy the book

• Amazon

Parts and Chapters

• Part I - What is Software Engineering?
  • Introduction
  • What is Engineering?
  • Fundamentals of an Engineering Approach?
• Part II - Optimize for Learning
  • Working Iteratively
  • Feedback
  • Incrementalism
  • Empiricism
  • Being Experimental
• Part III - Optimize for Managing Complexity
  • Modularity
  • Cohesion
  • Separation of Concerns
  • Information Hiding and Abstraction
  • Managing Coupling
• Part IV - Tools to Support Engineering in Software
  • The Tools of an Engineering Discpline
  • The Modern Software Engineer

Introduction

• Software development is a process of discovery and exploration; to succeed at software development software engineers must become experts at learning
• The best approach to learning is science, software engineers need to adopt the techniques and strategies of science and apply them to software development
• The scientific method is described as:
  • Characterize
    • Make an observation of the current state
  • Hypothesize
    • Create a description, a theory that may explain your observation
  • Predict
    • Make a prediction based on your hypothesis
  • Experiment
    • Test your prediction
• David Farley’s working definition of software engineering:
  • Software Engineering is the application of an empirical, sceintific approach to finding efficient, economic solutions to practical problems in software
• Software engineers must become experts at learning and experts at managing complexity
• Five techniques that form the base of the focus on learning:
  • Iteration
  • Feedback
  • Incrementalism
  • Experimentation
  • Empiricism
• Five elements that form the base of the focus on managing complexity:
  • Modularity
  • Cohesion
  • Separation of Concerns
  • Abstraction
  • Loose Coupling
• Five ideas to use as tools to steer software development:
  • Testability
  • Deployability
  • Speed
  • Controlling the variables
  • Continuous delivery
• This book “Modern Software Engineering” is about what it means to apply scientific-style reasoning to our discipline and so achieve something that we can genuinely refer to as software engineering

Tony’s Detailed Notes

Detailed Notes