Myths in Software Engineering: From the Other Side

An important component of Empirical Software Engineering (ESE) research involves the measurement, observation, analysis and understanding of software engineering in practice. Results analyzed without understanding the contexts in which they were obtained can lead to wrong and potentially harmful interpretation. There exist several myths in software engineering, most of which have been accepted for years as being conventional wisdom without having been questioned. In this talk we will deal briefly with a few popular myths in software engineering ranging from testing and static analysis to distributed development and highlight the importance of context and generalization.