This summer I was very honored to be asked to write an article for a so called festschrift, dedicated to the 60th Birthday of Derrick G. Kourie. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend the celebration of his birthday in person, but it was a big pleasure for me to be able to congratulate him in this original manner. We got acquainted during my graduation project, and ever since it has been a pleasure exchanging thoughts and interesting ideas about software engineering.

A special website has been set up that contains each of the articles that make up the complete festschrift, including the one I wrote. After I held a presentation at a workshop, we had a discussion about advances in software engineering, and that these improvements can have a downside too. In the festschrift article I elaborate on the hypothesis that the worst thing that can happen is that a means is being promoted to an end.

I won’t copy the whole article in verbatim as a blog post, just download the article to read the entire text. Except for the analogy I make between running a restaurant and running a software project, which deserves a post on its own. To be continued…