Jerod Santo changelog.com/posts

There's still no silver bullet

a friendly reminder that you haven't found the panacea

The late, great Fred Brooks wrote many words about software engineering. You may have heard of Brooks’s Law or read his seminal book, The Mythical Man-Month. Even if you haven’t, you’ve probably heard at least one colleague proclaim:

Nine women can’t make a baby in one month!

This is a powerful metaphor for two reasons. First: it’s so vivid that it’s hard to forget (and easy to recall in a time of need). Second: it makes obvious a not-so-obvious conclusion. Which is:

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

That’s a hard pill to swallow, especially when your project is late. But it’s a truth pill, which makes it worth choking down. Here’s another truth pill that Brooks wrote in his paper No Silver Bullet–Essence and Accident in Software Engineering:

There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order of magnitude [tenfold] improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity.


For those who don’t understand the silver bullet reference… it’s pulled from folklore where a bullet cast from silver is the only weapon that can kill a werewolf. Over time a silver bullet has come to represent “a simple, seemingly magical, solution to a difficult problem.” Brooks could have easily reached for panacea instead, but I think the shiny characteristic of silver makes it the perfect analog to software solutions.


I’ve found myself referencing this a couple times recently. Both of those conversations were in the context of React, but the principle applies to every over-adopted technology.

So, this post is a gentle reminder to my fellow software engineers:

  • Does a new tool promise to solve all your problems? It won’t
  • Do you think you’ve found the “one true tech”? You haven’t
  • Have a shiny hammer that looks great for hitting screws? It isn’t

Please humor me while I quote myself for a moment: (Hey, it’s easier than writing)

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We tend to be kind of lazy and just take the big hammer and hit all the nails with it. Like, “Oh, I’ve found the panacea. This is gonna solve all my problems”, because it does solve some of your problems big-time.

But it’s also is gonna create other problems, and it’s also not gonna fit in every place that you can shove it. I mean, I know there’s React-based command line builders… And it’s like, okay, if you like components, cool. That makes sense. But why is React building your command-line app? I just don’t understand.

When I extemporaneously said “I just don’t understand”, I meant that the choice confounds me. But I do understand why people might make it.

Saying “use the right tool for the job” is easy, but actually selecting the right tool for the job is anything but. Good tools are hard to find, hard to evaluate, hard to learn. We have constraints, we have biases, we have shortcomings.

But that’s all part of the work.

And if you “just use Go” or “just use React” or “just use Postgres” for every problem that crosses your keyboard, you’re just not putting in the work.

(And I say this as a guy who uses Postgres for most things! 😆)


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Discussion

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2023-05-25T03:42:39Z ago

just use Rust, except possibly when you’re working with a platform designed for another language (e.g. web => HTML/CSS/JS, Android => Java or Kotlin, macOS/iOS => Objective-C or Swift, Microsoft Office macros => Visual Basic), though Rust does have FFI crates for all of these.

2023-05-27T12:55:20Z ago

Nine women can’t make a baby in one month!

I quoted this to my wife once while trying to explain the concept from the book. She knew what I meant, but said (paraphrasing) it’s a micro aggression to pick out women and I might want to pick another example.

After some reflection and an initial knee jerk internal reaction of “no, it’s a fine example”, I agree with her. There’s no reason to change the book – it is what it is, it was written at a point in time, and it did it’s job of getting the readers to think. All that said, we can come up with a better example for the present and future. I don’t know what that example is, but I know we can do better.

Jerod Santo

Jerod Santo

Bennington, Nebraska

Jerod co-hosts The Changelog, crashes JS Party & takes out the trash (his old code) once in awhile.

2023-05-27T13:36:23Z ago

How is it a micro aggression? I do not understand.

2023-05-27T16:02:25Z ago

Well, maybe micro aggression isn’t the right term, but it’s something that left a bad taste in her mouth and I’m trying to remember exactly how she described it. I think you almost have to put your self in the shoes of someone who 1) has had to work upstream in an industry because of their gender 2) has had to deal with people in a society that see a women’s “job” is to bear children and careers come second at best 3) has had to deal with a lot of people having opinions over your body and what you do with it, most of which do not share your anatomy. After putting yourself in that position, the comparison starts to feel more icky.

I’ll be honest, I’m defending a view I don’t entirely “get” and may not be capable of understanding. However, after seeing her reaction when I said that quote, this is one of those times where I’m going to say “I believe you”. I’ve been incredibly privileged in this world as a white male, and that’s a pretty big blindspot, so I’m putting trust in someone else to see what’s there.

I’m not going to fault anyone for quoting it and you have nothing to apologize for; Part of the reason that quote works so effectively is how ridiculous it is. I’m just going to challenge people to do better, and it’s going to be hard.

Jerod Santo

Jerod Santo

Bennington, Nebraska

Jerod co-hosts The Changelog, crashes JS Party & takes out the trash (his old code) once in awhile.

2023-05-28T12:43:12Z ago

I’ll be honest, I’m defending a view I don’t entirely “get” and may not be capable of understanding. However, after seeing her reaction when I said that quote, this is one of those times where I’m going to say “I believe you”

That’s a fair stance to take, but it doesn’t produce much of a convincing argument that will drive people to change. If you want people to starting using a better metaphor, I challenge you to come up with one.

2023-06-28T12:58:27Z ago

“Over time a silver bullet has come to represent “a simple, seemingly magical, solution to a difficult problem.”
Well, maybe - but what you’re actually referring to here is a magic bullet, or Zauberkugel. Over time, some people - yes, including award-winning engineers and scientists - have come to confuse the two.

2024-04-19T22:48:07Z ago

The first Silver Bullet I added to my collection was Structured Programming when I first read Edsger Dijkstra’s “Go To Statement Considered Harmful.” In spite of its language limitations, I vowed to never use another GOTO in COBOL ever again.

I have since collected dozens if not hundreds of Silver Bullets. Yet the werewolf still lives.

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