
Ask HN: What Is a Silver Bullet? - williamdclt
We always see poping up in discussion threads that &quot;XXX is no silver bullet&quot; (XXX being anything like React, Docker, Lambda, Scrum, microservices...).<p>What <i>are</i> examples of silver bullets, direct and effortless solutions to long-standing problems?
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DyslexicAtheist
It was coined by Fred Brooks in his paper "No Silver Bullet – Essence and
Accident in Software Engineering"
[https://faculty.salisbury.edu/~xswang/Research/Papers/SERela...](https://faculty.salisbury.edu/~xswang/Research/Papers/SERelated/no-
silver-bullet.pdf)

 _" There is no single development, in either technology or management
technique, which by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement
within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity."_

to expand on @lugg's answer below any promise of a blanket solution (often
bolted on top of poorly designed systems) that try to mitigate the problems
(without solving the underlying cause)

examples are too numerous really but the paper is well worth a read

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simonblack
Possibly a reference to the fictional 'vampires can only be killed if they're
shot by a silver bullet' as normal lead bullets presumably aren't effective.

Likewise, it must be a 'wooden' stake through the heart. Etc, etc.

More or less it implies that there is only one effective solution to a
problem, and that is what must be used if you want the problem to go away.

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lugg
By definition anything that solves all your problems, so subjectively there
are none.

I'm sure there are examples of things that solve many problems, while not
silver bullets that might be the closest approximation.

Is that more to what you're looking for with this post?

