Annotated Bibliography and References - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 438

the new ideas are in opposition to existing ideas. Kuhn's book on scientific revolu-
tions deals with the same concepts in a historical setting.
Love, Tom. Object Lessons . SIGS Books, New York, 1993.
Tom Love is one of the codevelopers of the Objective-C programming lan-
guage (together with Brad Cox). As readers of the current book know, Objective-
C was selected by Steve Jobs as the primary language for both Apple and NeXT
software projects.
Tom Love's book is a good introduction and history of the object-oriented
paradigm, which is now a major asset of software engineering. The topic also in-
cludes a fascinating discussion of an early example of the damages that can be
caused by late and unwise requirements changes.
In 1628, the new Swedish ship-of-the-line Vasa was launched and then cap-
sized and sank after traveling less than a mile. Apparently, as construction was
nearing completion, King Gustavus Adolphus ordered an extra gun deck on top of
the existing gun deck against the advice of his naval architect and the builder.
The new gun deck plus the heavy bronze cannon it carried caused the ship to
become top-heavy. As soon as the breeze freshened, the Vasa keeled over and
sank, with the loss of many lives. Although a ship is not software, the Vasa
provides a strong lesson that ill-considered and late requirements changes can
cause unanticipated consequences.
The ship was recovered and is now located at a permanent museum in Stock-
holm, Sweden. This museum has nothing to do with software, but it does provide
interesting historical facts about late requirements changes.
I have visited the museum while working in Stockholm. The Vasa is a beautiful
ship and well crafted, except for being top-heavy. It was intended to be the state of
the art at a time when Sweden was a major military power in northern Europe.
McConnell, Steve. Code Complete: A Practical Guide for Software Con-
struction , 2nd edition. Microsoft Press, Redmond, WA, 2004.
This topic first came out in 1993 and was soon very popular among the soft-
ware engineering community. This is a technical book aimed at practicing soft-
ware engineers who actually code applications. It has remained popular (hence a
second edition) and continues to provide practical information even in the current
decade. It remains one of the top-selling books in the software engineering sector.
Pressman, Roger. Software Engineering—A Practitioner's Approach , 6th
edition. McGraw-Hill, New York, 2005.