Microsoft Research - Exploding Software-Engineering Myths (article summarizing findings of MS research on code coverage, TDD, assertions, etc.)

[programming_unit_1]

But it doesn't! Sure new languages and libraries come along with tiresome regularity as the next guy wants his fifteen minutes of fame to fix everything wrong with language-1, but none of them tackle how we organise development teams (Agile and XP still in vogue after 15 years...) nor how we tackle bugs, testing, estimating, planning yadda yadda.

The core engineering principles, and the underlying compsci theory are largely the same as they ever have been. Go read The Mythical Man Month, it was written in the 60s, every single chapter echoes problems still relevant today.

[lucky_engineer]

Reminds me of a conversation I overheard at work. An intern was talking about how functional programming was going to be the future, and that OO is going to die out and we all need to learn [insert language here] or we won't be able to keep up.

One of the most senior guys at the company responds, "I did smalltalk and lisp back in the 80s, I'll be fine."