It has been more than 20 years since Mythical Man-Month, author Fred Brooks, published the article No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering. In his original paper, Fred Brooks argues that there is no innovation in software development that would achieve an order of magnitude increase in productivity (the silver bullet) in the ensuing ten years. At OOPSLA last year (2007), a retrospective discussion panel on No Silver Bullet was held including Fred Brooks himself, Martin Fowler (who later surprised the audience appearing as a werewolf), Ricardo Lopez, Aki Namioka, Linda Northrop, David Lorge Parnas, Dave Thomas, and Steven Fraser as panel impresario. The panel explored in hind-sight Brooks’ premise that there is no silver bullet in software development. InfoQ was present at the panel and has worked tirelessly to bring this content out and it is now our privelge to present an editted summary of this panel, which was perhaps one of the most important events in our industry in 2007.
Read: No Silver Bullet Reloaded Retrospective Panel Summary
OOPSLA 2008, the conference for "mind, body and soul", starts on October 21 and lasts 3 days, the event taking place in Nashville, Tennessee. InfoQ is also present filming the keynotes and panels which will publish later this year. In cooperation with OOPSLA, IEEE Software has also released publically a short PDF article about the panel as well (search for No Silver Bullet here).