Software engineering is a highly dynamic discipline. Hence, as times change, so too might our beliefs about core processes in this field. This paper checks some five beliefs that originated in the past decades that comment on the relationships between (i) developer productivity; (ii) software quality and (iii) years of developer experience. Using data collected from 1,356 developers in the period 1995 to 2006, we found support for only one of the five beliefs titled “Quality entails productivity.” We found no clear support for four other beliefs based on programming languages and software developers. However, from the sporadic evidence of the four other beliefs, we learned that a narrow scope could delude practitioners in misinterpreting certain effects to hold in their day-to-day work. Lastly, through an aggregated view of assessing the five beliefs, we find programming languages act as a confounding factor for developer productivity and software quality. Thus the overall message of this work is that it is both important and possible to revisit old beliefs in software engineering. Researchers and practitioners should routinely retest old beliefs.

软件工程是一门高度动态的学科。因此，随着时代的变化，我们对这一领域核心流程的信念也将随之变化。本文检查了过去几十年中提出的关于以下方面的五种信念：（i）开发人员生产力；（ii）软件质量和（iii）多年的开发人员经验。使用1995年至2006年期间从1,356位开发人员收集的数据，我们发现仅支持以下五个信念之一：“质量意味着生产力”。” 我们发现没有明确支持基于编程语言和软件开发人员的其他四个信念。但是，从其他四种信念的零星证据中，我们了解到，范围狭窄可能会使从业人员误解在日常工作中可能产生的某些影响。最后，通过综合评估这五个信念，我们发现编程语言是影响开发人员生产力和软件质量的混杂因素。因此，这项工作的总体信息是，重新审视软件工程中的旧观念既重要又可能。研究人员和从业人员应定期重新测试旧的信念。