[survivedurcode]

Just because there was research from 1970 (as there was in subsequent years) showing that big design up front is a bad idea doesn’t mean that waterfall is a straw man argument. It is probably necessary when you are shipping code with extremely high costs of operation, where mistakes are extremely expensive (i.e. missiles, space shuttles). I imagine automotive ECU software is probably in that category.

The software industry has ignored research from 1970s and on and continues to ignore it today.

Look at the microservices craze. It’s another way that big-design up-front has been brought back.