From the paragraph following the "no silver bullet" paragraph: > Skepticism is not pessimism, however. Although we see no startling breakthroughs, and indeed,

From the paragraph following the "no silver bullet" paragraph: > Skepticism is not pessimism, however. Although we see no startling breakthroughs, and indeed, believe such to be inconsistent with the nature of software, many encouraging innovations are under way. A disciplined, consistent effort to develop, propagate, and exploit them should indeed yield an order-of-magnitude improvement. There is no royal road, but there is a road.