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The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
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Few books on software project management have been as influential and timeless as The Mythical Man-Month. With a blend of software engineering facts and thought-provoking opinions, Fred Brooks offers insight for anyone managing complex projects. These essays draw from his experience as project manager for the IBM System/360 computer family and then for OS/360, its massive
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Paperback, Anniversary Edition, 322 pages
Published
August 2nd 1995
by Addison-Wesley Professional
(first published 1975)
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Start your review of The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering

Except blatant sexism* it was a pretty good book. It's a series of experiences that you gradually pick up when you're working in the software industry. It's a little outdated, e.g. we don't have printed manuals anymore and we don't have to deal with the woes of constantly updating them, but a lot of wisdoms from this book are still valuable.
* the entire book never uses a female pronoun. ever. it makes it sound like engineers, managers, technical leads, clients are always only male. plus there's ...more
* the entire book never uses a female pronoun. ever. it makes it sound like engineers, managers, technical leads, clients are always only male. plus there's ...more

In this classic book on the software development process, Fred Brooks demolishes several persistent myths. They never quite go away: every new generation just has to learn them over again.
The first and most dangerous of these myths is the belief that putting more people on a project means it'll be completed more quickly. Brooks includes one of the most brilliant graphs I've ever seen, plotting number of women against time required to produce a baby. Would you believe it: the graph is flat at ni ...more
The first and most dangerous of these myths is the belief that putting more people on a project means it'll be completed more quickly. Brooks includes one of the most brilliant graphs I've ever seen, plotting number of women against time required to produce a baby. Would you believe it: the graph is flat at ni ...more

As far as I can tell, the core tenets of this book aren't really even up for dispute anymore. I don't mean to sound like the grumpy reader mentioned in the epilogue, complaining that the book offered "nothing I didn't know already know" (however experienced he might have been, I still doubt it), but whether from my limited experience in the industry first hand or second-hand through the various managers I've had over the years, the tenet that developers and time aren't interchangeable resources
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I want to print many copies of this book.
I want to print many copies and roll them up.
I want to roll them up and take them to meetings with my clients.
I want to take them to meetings and hit them over the head repeatedly while screaming "more... than... 30... years... and you... still... don't... understand... anything... stop... making... me... write... bad... software...!"
Seriously. ...more
I want to print many copies and roll them up.
I want to roll them up and take them to meetings with my clients.
I want to take them to meetings and hit them over the head repeatedly while screaming "more... than... 30... years... and you... still... don't... understand... anything... stop... making... me... write... bad... software...!"
Seriously. ...more

Since what I know about programming probably could be written on the back of a postcard and wouldn't be worth reading there's nothing worthwhile that I can say about the software engineering side of this collection of essays about software engineering.
Further Brooks was writing in the 60s, in part based on experience from the 50s, which I suppose means I'll be making some claim to wider applicability with regard to project management & people management and understanding the nature of tasks.
I re ...more
Further Brooks was writing in the 60s, in part based on experience from the 50s, which I suppose means I'll be making some claim to wider applicability with regard to project management & people management and understanding the nature of tasks.
I re ...more

The Mythical Man-Month starts of strong--with a solid mix of good humor, great story-telling, and even better analogies and metaphors. Most interesting, the claims Frederick Brooks made more than 40 years ago remain true today. But even so, the book has not aged well.
Chapters 5-8 and 9-15 seem wildly out of date. I give some reasoning below, but the gist is that the middle is mostly skippable. Worse is that the religious overtones get a little out of hand in this section. And to make it even mor ...more
Chapters 5-8 and 9-15 seem wildly out of date. I give some reasoning below, but the gist is that the middle is mostly skippable. Worse is that the religious overtones get a little out of hand in this section. And to make it even mor ...more

I was underwhelmed with how badly this text has aged. The references, which made sense 15 years ago, no longer hold water, and the most-referenced-project is certainly no longer the way we write software nowadays. While the idea remains valid, I think people writing about this text are more relevant than the text itself, holding only historical value, at most.

I read this book originally in college and then re-read it after a couple years of coding professionally. While there are certainly some dated sections, such as the idea of having the analog of a surgical team to code, many of the suggestions have held against the test of time.
The two most popular are "no silver bullets" and "adding developers to a late project makes it later." The former is that no new technology/technique will make an order of magnitude difference in productivity over 10 year ...more
The two most popular are "no silver bullets" and "adding developers to a late project makes it later." The former is that no new technology/technique will make an order of magnitude difference in productivity over 10 year ...more

I re-read this recently after recommending it to a colleague, mainly just for nostalgia and planning to read a few of the more popular essays, like "The Tar Pit." Instead I read the entire book again and still found it fresh and insightful, over 40 years since publication. The prose manages to be dense with ideas but brilliantly clear and often witty. Now as I read contemporary writing (blogs but even books), I deeply lament this lost art.
Aside from his bold statements, most famously Brooks' Law ...more
Aside from his bold statements, most famously Brooks' Law ...more

I'm really surprised that people still recommend this book. It's primarily concerned with very large scale software projects (i.e., an operating system), much of the "data" is anecdotal, and many of the assumptions are simply outdated. For instance, Brooks writes about (1) creating paper manuals with documentation about the system that get updated daily for the engineers, (2) strategies for time-allocation on centralized computers, and (3) about optimizing for compiled code size. Those simply ar
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This is more of historical importance than a go-to book nowadays. Still, I'm glad to have read it.
I agree with the points made in these two reviews, especially the ones about the default male programmer and the overextended Christian viewpoint, which actually makes Brooks misstate one of his examples.
Still, I loved the positive and realistic message of "There is no royal road, but there is a road." I can stand behind both parts of this one. ...more
I agree with the points made in these two reviews, especially the ones about the default male programmer and the overextended Christian viewpoint, which actually makes Brooks misstate one of his examples.
Still, I loved the positive and realistic message of "There is no royal road, but there is a road." I can stand behind both parts of this one. ...more

Don't add people to a late software project or you'll make it later.
There, summarized the book for you. ...more
There, summarized the book for you. ...more

Everybody should read this book, not just programmers or project managers. It's easy and fun. There are 9 chapters, but you only need to read 3 of them. You'll know which ones. When he starts slinging equations, skip over those parts. He uses cooking metaphors where most software books use building construction metaphors. The unconscious gender bias, typical of the time, is almost funny. He keeps saying how many "men" does it take to do a project.
I'm frequently surprised at how many software pro ...more
I'm frequently surprised at how many software pro ...more

* Estimating software project completion time is really hard. (Requirements change, software is intangible and it has to fit with idiosyncrasies of human systems)
* Aristocracy in managing projects is better. There should be one final decision maker. Metaphor is a surgical team.
* Cost of coordination and communication within large teams is often ignored. This causes poor estimation.
* If a project is delayed - rescheduling or reducing scope is recommended. Adding manpower will result in further de ...more

Interesting book with a pretty narrow focus, a collection of essays on the management and planning of good software engineering. The author instilled the mistakes and successes of his work on the IBM 360 Operating System in the 70s, and most of what he found still applies today. For example, wisdom like: more programmers make a project only late, and if you add programmers to an already late project, results will arrive even later. Have an architect and a manager, hopefully in two different pers
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Dated, unapproachable, and in some ways misogynistic (systemic but unintentional I'm sure). I really understand why this is still the #2 most popular programming book on Safari Books Online (right after Clean Code).
Probably more than half the lessons and suggestions don't make sense in the modern world of high-level languages, agile software development, and continual development/release.
Other lessons are still widely applicable... so widely applicable that they're near-universal knowledge alrea ...more
Probably more than half the lessons and suggestions don't make sense in the modern world of high-level languages, agile software development, and continual development/release.
Other lessons are still widely applicable... so widely applicable that they're near-universal knowledge alrea ...more

Many times when I read a book that is dated, its pearls of wisdom are still there in clear view to be harvested and made use of. I can't say the same thing about the Mythical Man Month. I will grant that Brook's Law still holds, and managers still today stumble over this one. However much of his advice fell flat in the face of the more recent agile development movement and still more recent devops movement. In the end he was still preaching a kind of waterfall type approach to development which
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This book had some insightful ideas regarding software engineering practices, but a large portion of the book is no longer relevant.
The author dove into some specific details about situations that he had encountered, for example, practices involving developers planning how they would divide the debugging computers amongst themselves.
Modern machines can handle much more than computers could in the 70s, and this book needs an update to reflect that.
The main takeaways I got from this book are that ...more
The author dove into some specific details about situations that he had encountered, for example, practices involving developers planning how they would divide the debugging computers amongst themselves.
Modern machines can handle much more than computers could in the 70s, and this book needs an update to reflect that.
The main takeaways I got from this book are that ...more

Sep 09, 2020
Freddie Sykes - "Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi"
rated it
did not like it
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review of another edition
Contains much that is true and much that is trivial. Unfortunately, the stuff that's true is trivial and the stuff that's not trivial is not true.
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The quality of this book is so inquestionable that I don't even know where to start. First of all, I started by reading this book after a recommendation of the Professors of the curricular unit I have with the same name as the theme of the book: Software Engineering. The fact is that quickly, the book became something special, something I was reading and enjoying, something that just a few books can do, and I must say I never expected this to happen with a technical one. Having the privillege to
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I love to read "old" books. The fact they were written a lot of time ago and are still relevant prove that it really worth reading them.
But I didn't like this book as much as I wanted to. Maybe because I had an expectation far from reality based on so many good reviews of a lot of people I admire. I know its content is still relevant today. But some parts are not. And some parts are still relevant but we need to "translate" to our days. And some parts have been better explained by other books li ...more
But I didn't like this book as much as I wanted to. Maybe because I had an expectation far from reality based on so many good reviews of a lot of people I admire. I know its content is still relevant today. But some parts are not. And some parts are still relevant but we need to "translate" to our days. And some parts have been better explained by other books li ...more

I have read it as part of my PhD, since it's part of the classical books of software engineering. Yet the book tackles very important issues not only about management but how people interact during software development. I've recognised myself in many situations described by the author (even that I'm not part of a software development team).
One might wonder, as I did, how many of the concepts explained by the author apply to current technology of the 21st century, but the author tackles that in t ...more
One might wonder, as I did, how many of the concepts explained by the author apply to current technology of the 21st century, but the author tackles that in t ...more

This is a master piece of software engineering. Many people have read this one because this one is an extremely approachable account. When I read this book in 2007, I felt how much of value this one book brought which was written more than 20 years ago brought even then. Since then, I have heard many people talk and swear by this book. I have one gripe against the readers and people who talk about this. They use this book to support their stances and most often these people do not possess the ki
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04/23/11
Dr. Brooks is the founder of our department, more than enough reason to read his book.
The recent extension to our department building was named after Dr. Brooks. Apparently the money for the building came as an anonymous donation from an alumnus, on the condition that it be named after Dr. Brooks. That is the kind of respect he has won from several people. ...more
Dr. Brooks is the founder of our department, more than enough reason to read his book.
The recent extension to our department building was named after Dr. Brooks. Apparently the money for the building came as an anonymous donation from an alumnus, on the condition that it be named after Dr. Brooks. That is the kind of respect he has won from several people. ...more

The book shows it’s age in a lot of places and it can be tough to power through sections which describe the status quo nearly 50 years ago - though some of these parts allow us to appreciate how far the field has come since then.
The reason I have given 4 stars is that there are a lot of good nuggets of information in this book - things that have stood the test of time. The book is very much ahead of its time with some of the observations made within.
The reason I have given 4 stars is that there are a lot of good nuggets of information in this book - things that have stood the test of time. The book is very much ahead of its time with some of the observations made within.

Even for an inexperienced undergraduate student like me, this book made a lasting impression and left me pondering on the various human dynamics involved in software engineering. Definitely a must-read.
Warning: It does get a little dry at times, and most of the examples are very outdated,but the principles explained are timeless.
Warning: It does get a little dry at times, and most of the examples are very outdated,but the principles explained are timeless.

If I would be asked to name just a one book about project management or software development in general — I'd say: "The Mythical Man-Month". Nice to read it again after more years and compare with own experience. Anniversary edition with later updates is a nice way to see the the history of software engineering and its management.
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Originally written in 1975, prior to the PC explosion in the mid-1980s, Brooks book is still relevant today. The same systems management "rules-of-thumb" and potential pitfalls still exist in largely the same form. Many of his bigger lessons expand beyond just software development and apply to program management as a whole. A must read for anyone in that develops complex systems.
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It's a classic - but it's not timeless. For me, the book didn't click and I didn't get much takeaway. It just felt too outdated to connect the chapters with modern software development and agile practices. But maybe this is too much to ask in 2020, 45 years after the book was published...
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“Adding manpower to a late software project, makes it later.”
—
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“Systems program building is an entropy-decreasing process, hence inherently metastable. Program maintenance is an entropy-increasing process, and even its most skillful execution only delays the subsidence of the system into unfixable obsolescence.”
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