The Silver Bullet: Why Software Is Bad and What We Can Do to Fix It

Some parts are broken up into single paragraph sections (which are frequently much too long), the headings add no value at all, and the content itself is a rambling drunkards walk through only loosely related ideas.

If there was ever a case for "reprocessing" someone else's work as a value add - this is it.

Even worse is his hatred for the phrase "no silver bullet". When people say that, they aren't saying that writing good software is impossible, they're saying that there is no substitute for working hard and paying attention to what you're doing, that mechanically copying strategies, processes, tools, etc., is not a panacea.

"But he acknowledges that, he's saying that it restricts the scope of improvements to evolutionary ones." No he's not, he's misunderstanding the problem. The problem isn't how to make reliable software, it's how to best understand a problem and describe a solution. That is going to be hard and error prone forever, just go ask a hardware designer.