Browse Books

Reviewer: Charles Alan Wolfe

The unconventional structure of this book makes it difficult to review. Those familiar with Freedman and Wienberg's book [1] will recognize part of the problem: the somewhat informal question and answer style. While most textbooks and handbooks have some degree of redundancy, for convenience or for pedagogical reasons, the format of this text makes redundancy a necessity. Perhaps the subtitle found on the title page of this book (A treasury of technical and managerial tips, techniques, guidelines, ideas, sources, and case studies for efficient, effective, and economical software maintenance) is the best place to begin. Thus, this is a structured collection of questions and answers about various aspects of software maintenance, including an excellent attempt to define the phrase. The effect is somewhat like sitting down with your guru and engaging in a guided dialogue. Since there are multiple approaches at varying levels (e.g., hints and how-tos for the programmer and for managers, as well as all about good software design methodology), essentially the same answer will be given to what are, on the surface, different questions. The book is often a fine example of variations on a theme. As to the physical book itself, I found the typeface difficult to read. The brown-black ink does not help—perhaps the copy provided to the reviewer was near the end of the press run and the ink reservoir was low__?__ The number of apparent typos—some of which may confuse the uninitiated—is low and pretty well confined to only a couple of chapters. Since these are essentially reprints of earlier works, perhaps they were not too clean in the original either__?__ However, the above commentary should not be taken to imply that the book is without redeeming value. Most of the material is relatively fundamental and introductory, with occasional in-depth excursions. With a handbook of this sort, one would not expect textbook-length treatment of each topic. The extensive treatment and praise of Warnier's (and the Warnier-Orr) approach and methods of design (see, e.g., [2]) is the one area that approaches textbook style and depth. Most of the material is fairly easy reading; the ideas are not impossible to comprehend for most folks and are a reasonable minimum one must consider when involved in or contemplating software maintenance. The manager who is new to software, especially to the amorphous world of maintenance, will receive a good grounding; the maintenance practitioner will find some handy hints that if not already in use, probably should be. The practitioner may even find some ammunition for those discussions with management on such topics as: why “it” is going to take so long, and, why a rewrite is a lot smarter than “fixing” it. Winning one such argument might be worth the cost of the book; think of it as one less bottle of antacid, or whatever, to buy. The maintenance practitioner at either the managerial or “in-the-trenches” level will find several ego-massaging, attitude-vindicating anecdotes and messages. These may be enough to cause one to want the book—your existence and activities are justified. To summarize, the book is introductory but with extensive and recent references to the nitty-gritty literature, including not a few of the author's own works. It is useful for self-study, but would be difficult for classroom use except perhaps as extra reading. The serious reader will do well to see the works discussed in the comparative review on this topic in the January 1987 issue of Computing Reviews (see Review 8701-0007).