2. “No Silver Bullet” - refired
A rebuttal to the original essay
9 years later
Fred Brooks wrote an essay in 1986 called “No Silver Bullet”
The Mythical Man-Month
by Fredrick P. Brooks, Jr.

3. “No Silver Bullet” - Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering
Written in 1986 by Fred Brooks
He argues that "there is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order of magnitude improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity."

4. The metaphor “the silver bullet” applies to any straightforward solution perceived to have extreme effectiveness. The phrase typically appears with an expectation that some new technology or practice will easily cure a major prevailing problem

5. Not by chance but rather incidental
Accident vs. Incident
Not by chance but rather incidental
any event that happens unexpectedly, without a deliberate plan or cause.
happening or likely to happen in an unplanned or subordinate conjunction with something else.
The creation of software was not meant to be diminished by saying it was created by accident.

6. The essay is a must read for software engineers.
Arguments for and against the theories in the original “No Silver Bullet”
The essay is a must read for software engineers.
Brooks stands by what he wrote 9 years ago.
1990 paper by Brad Cox called “There is a silver Bullet” argues for reusable and interchangeable components to help with the conceptual problem and Brooks agrees.
He does have problems with Cox.
Cox reads the essay as the is a deficiency in how programmers build software. Actually what Brooks is saying is that the whole process in inherently complex because of the software that is being designed and what is required within it
1992 paper by David Harrel “Biting the Silver Bullet”. The most careful analysis of NSB. NSB as a whole contains too much doom and gloom. Brooks is a pessimist . Mainly in part because in NSB brooks is only looking forward 10 years for a significant change.
According to Brooks the computer technology is ever changing and 10 years is more than enough time to see if there is a silver bullet who could have predicted the computer revolution of the 1980’s?

7. …Yesterday’s complexity is tomorrow’s order. Steve Lukasik Northrop
R.L. Glass wrote in 1988
Which accurately summaries what Brooks feels at the time of this paper is
That software development is a conceptually tough business. That magic solutions are not just around the corner. That is is time for the practitioner to examine evolutionary improvements rather than to wait or hope for revolutionary ones.