Archive for May, 2008
“Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering”: an update
One of the books I’m currently writing is Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering, a greatly expanded and updated version of a book I published back in the 1990s. I’ve been posted new and revised pitfalls over at my Bruce F. Webster & Associates (bfwa.com) website. To make the pitfalls a bit easier to browse, I’ve […]
The Arc of Engineering
[Copyright 2008 by Bruce F. Webster. All rights reserved. Adapted from Surviving Complexity (forthcoming).] And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot; And thereby hangs a tale. — William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene vii. I have observed a pattern […]
The engineering shortage: Japan
Today’s New York Times reports that Japan is “running out of engineers“: After years of fretting over coming shortages, the country is actually facing a dwindling number of young people entering engineering and technology-related fields. Universities call it “rikei banare,” or “flight from science.” The decline is growing so drastic that industry has begun advertising […]
Honors I never expected
[UPDATE: I received a response from Martindale-Hubbell in the comment section to this post.] I received an interesting e-mail today, with the following paragraph: Please accept our formal congratulations on the high achievement represented by this Peer Review Rating. You, Bruce Webster, are one of a select group of attorneys to have achieved this level […]
The Wetware Crisis: All Our Sins Remembered – Intro
[Copyright 2008 by Bruce F. Webster. All rights reserved. Adapted from Surviving Complexity (forthcoming).] Humanity has been developing information technology for half a century. That experience has taught us this unpleasant truth: virtually every information technology project above a certain size or complexity is significantly late and over budget or fails altogether; those that don’t […]