Steven C. McConnell is an author of

software engineering Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...

textbooks such as ''

Code Complete ''Code Complete'' is a software development book, written by Steve McConnell and published in 1993 by Microsoft Press, encouraging developers to continue past code-and-fix programming and the big design up front and waterfall models. It is ...

'', ''Rapid Development'', and ''Software Estimation''. He is cited as an expert in software engineering and project management.

Career

McConnell graduated with a bachelor's degree in philosophy, minoring in computer science, at

Whitman College Whitman College is a private liberal arts college in Walla Walla, Washington. The school offers 53 majors and 33 minors in the liberal arts and sciences, and it has a student-to-faculty ratio of 9:1. Whitman was the first college in the Pacifi ...

Walla Walla, Washington Walla Walla is a city in Walla Walla County, Washington, where it is the largest city and county seat. It had a population of 34,060 at the 2020 census, estimated to have decreased to 33,927 as of 2021. The population of the city and its two su ...

, and a master's degree in

from

Seattle University Seattle University (SeattleU) is a private Jesuit university in Seattle, Washington. Seattle University is the largest independent university in the Northwestern United States, with over 7,500 students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate prog ...

. He then pursued a career in the desktop software industry, working at

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product ...

, the

Russell Investment Group London Stock Exchange Group plc (LSEG) is a United Kingdom-based stock exchange and Financial services, financial information company headquartered in the City of London, England. It owns the London Stock Exchange (on which it is also listed) ...

and several other Seattle area firms. At Microsoft, McConnell worked on

TrueType TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating sy ...

as part of

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3 ...

. At Boeing, he worked on a

Strategic Defense Initiative The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively nicknamed the "''Star Wars'' program", was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (intercontinental ballistic ...

project. McConnell published his first book, ''

'', in 1993. From 1996 to 1998, he was the editor of the "Best Practices" column in the

IEEE Software ''IEEE Software'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed magazine and scientific journal published by the IEEE Computer Society covering all aspects of software engineering, processes, and practices. Its mission is to be the best source of reliable, use ...

magazine. From 1998 to 2002, he served as the

editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...

of the magazine. ''The New York Times'' has quoted McConnell stating that there are "15 to 50 defects per 1,000 lines of code in delivered software" on average.

References

TV Interview
University of Washington TV
Web Interview
on

.NET Rocks! The domain name net is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used in the Domain Name System of the Internet. The name is derived from the word ''network'', indicating it was originally intended for organizations involved in networking technologies ...

External links

Steve McConnell's websiteConstrux Software
Steve McConnell's company {{DEFAULTSORT:McConnell, Steve American male non-fiction writers American technology writers Living people Seattle University alumni Software engineering researchers American software engineers Whitman College alumni Year of birth missing (living people)