Silver Bullets and Other Mysteries

What can developers do when faced with an aged software system? This is where a silver bullet comes in handy. At various times, this silver bullet has been known by names such as structured programming, object-oriented languages, 4GLs (fourth-generation programming languages), CASE (computer-aided software engineering) tools, RDBMSs (relational database management systems), XML, visual programming, n-tier architectures, managed code - the list goes on. What´s important is that the move suits everybody perfectly. Software ages and becomes increasingly expensive to maintain. New technologies offer modest but not spectacular improvements in productivity. It´s therefore sensible from time to time to rebuild a system from scratch. It might be harmless and politically expedient to claim that we´ve found a silver bullet, but it´s even better to know what we´re really doing