Shape of Code
shape-of-code.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2022
Derek Jones writes data-driven critiques of software engineering research, covering effort estimation, compilers, language history and developer careers.
What HN saysHN commenters cite it as skeptical evidence against common claims, such as the idea that software effort estimation research is mostly fake.
19HN people shared it
3linked it in comments
18stories submitted
250story points
5 months agolast shared
2022people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Software effort estimation is mostly fake research3 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 270% of new software engineering papers on ArXiv are LLM related2 people · 4 points · first shared 2026 · 1 comments on HN
- 3A new career in software development: advice for non-youngsters1 people · 97 points · first shared 2022 · 108 comments on HN
- 421 Algol 60 Compilers in 19621 people · 56 points · first shared 2024 · 54 comments on HN
- 5Parsing R code: Freedom of expression is not always a good idea (2012)1 people · 50 points · first shared 2022 · 36 comments on HN
- 6Half-life of Microsoft products is 7 years1 people · 24 points · first shared 2025 · 1 comments on HN
- 7The Shape of Code » Finding links between GCC source code and the C Standard1 people · 3 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 8Early research on economies of scale for computer systems1 people · 3 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 9Investigating an LLM generated C compiler1 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 10ISO C++ committee has a new chief sheep herder1 people · 2 points · first shared 2025 · 1 comments on HN
- 11Rereading the Mythical Man-Month1 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 12Specification Based Programming1 people · 1 points · first shared 2026 · 1 comments on HN
- 13Decline in downloads of once popular packages Yesterday Derek Jones1 people · 1 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 14Cost-effectiveness decision for fixing a known coding mistake1 people · 1 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 15The Whitehouse report on adopting memory safety1 people · 1 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
di4na · 2023-10-07
I want to raise a point of order here.
We do not have any good research backing "bugs found later in the process cost more to fix".
If anything, the few empirical and solid dataset we have show no correlation, to at best really light one.
This principle may sound solid in theory, but the evidence is not here to support it and if anything seems to point to its invalidity.
See in particular
https://shape-of-code.com/2021/06/27/increase-in-defect-fixing-costs-w…
eadler · 2024-01-04
You might enjoy these three things on the topic of software development:
1. Derek Jones. (2021, January 17). Software effort estimation is mostly fake research. The Shape of Code. https://shape-of-code.com/2021/01/17/software-effort-estimation-is-mos…
2. Andy Oram, Greg Wilson, & Andrew Oram (Eds.). (2011). Making software: what really works, and why we believe it (1st ed). O’Reilly.
3. Bossavit, L. (2015). The leprechauns of software engineering: how folklore turns into fact and what to do about it. Leanpub.
WesolyKubeczek · 2023-06-18
Stay in the field long enough and the number of anecdotes will grow so much that you will notice the pattern, unless your pet rock’s intelligence can surpass your own.
Also, hasn’t there been a link [0] just a couple days ago about how most of the “serious science research” done about software development estimation is based on datasets that are either smaller than the number of anecdotes a typical software developer will easily encounter in five years, or are right away made up? Just what kind of data would you expect, and from whom?
[0] https://shape-of-code.com/2021/01/17/software-effort-estimation-is-mos…