No, that's incorrect. There were 50+ years of really serious works on software engineering. Just most assholes these days have never read a single one, never done any of the work.
"there is no ACM Handbook" There absolutely are. Sedgewick's Algorithms, Bentley's Programming Pearls. For higher levels, Kent Beck's Extreme Programming Explained, Tom DeMarco's Peopleware, Fred Brooks' No Silver Bullet.
Just, YOU haven't read them, or applied anything from them.
