The Mythical Man-Month

Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition
by Frederick P. Brooks
Addison-Wesley 1975-1995

Review

Possibly even better than Software Creativity (to which it borrows the conclusion of one of its parts)! At least, offers a more fluid presentation, with corrections and updates postponed to a separate part, and a summary in the form of a list of statements.

Made of two famous former publications, "The Mythical Man-Month" and "No Silver Bullet", and their updates.

Roughly, the message is that although it does not qualify as a "silver-bullet" (one order of magnitude improvement over ten years), incrementally grown object-orientation is the way to go.

A great deal of attention paid to "conceptual integrity".

Quotes

p 183

The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one. Hence descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity often abstract away its essence.

Reviews ToC
Marc Girod
Last modified: Thu Jan 18 13:40:13 EET 2001