[bhntr3]

So, this paper is actually from 1986. More fuel for your argument.

Out of the Tar Pit (http://shaffner.us/cs/papers/tarpit.pdf) is an interesting response. I'm not convinced Functional Relational Programming is a silver bullet. But I think the arguments about state are certainly compelling.

After reading Out of the Tar Pit, I got the impression that No Silver Bullet was perhaps accurate for individual programmers. But I think there are still lots of silver bullets for teams of programmers. I think a lot of your examples fall in that category. Source control, internet resources, etc. That all helps us collaborate.

I think maybe Out of the Tar Pit points at some things we can do in our code to improve our productivity as a group (by making code easier to understand and reason about.) I think some of Bret Victor's immediate feedback stuff (https://vimeo.com/36579366) and the places the Eve team are taking it (http://www.chris-granger.com/2015/08/17/version-0/) are also pointing in that direction.

Ultimately, I think a lot of the crappiness in software these days exists because the things that are very easy for a single programmer make things hard for a group. It's funny because the author of "No Silver Bullet" is also the author of "The Mythical Man Month". Maybe he doesn't focus on collaboration because the conclusion of the Mythical Man Month was "only let one person code and have everyone else support him."