Chapter Five. Body of Knowledge

Truth will sooner come out of error than from confusion.

FRANCIS BACON

A person needs to know about 50,000 chunks of information to be an expert in a field, where a chunk is any piece of knowledge that can be remembered rather than derived.[1] In mature fields, it typically takes at least ten years for a world-class expert to acquire that much knowledge. Some people have argued that software-related knowledge isn't stable enough to be codified into a well-defined body of knowledge. They say that half of what a person needs to know to develop software today will be obsolete within three years. If the half-life claim is true, in the 10 years it would take an expert to learn 50,000 chunks of information, 30,000 of those chunks would become obsolete. Would-be software engineers would be like Sisyphus, pushing a boulder up a mountain only to have the boulder roll down the mountain as soon as it reaches the top.

What are the half-lives of Java, Perl, C++, Linux, and Microsoft Windows? All these technologies are highly relevant as I write this, but will they still be relevant by the time you read this? The half-life claim might well be true for technology-related knowledge. But there is another kind of software development knowledge that is likely to serve a professional programmer throughout his or her career, and that knowledge is not subject to these same limitations.



Professional Software Development(c) Shorter Schedules, Higher Quality Products, More Successful Projects, [... ]reers
Professional Software Development(c) Shorter Schedules, Higher Quality Products, More Successful Projects, [... ]reers
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 164

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