Selected Product:
| The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, 20th Anniversary Edition
Paperback
Edition: 1st
Author: Frederick P. Brooks
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Release Date: 1995-08-02
ISBN-10: 0201835959
ISBN-13: 0785342835953
List Price: $39.99
Average Customer Rating:
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Code Complete, Second Edition
ISBN-10: 0735619670
ISBN-13: 0790145196705
List Price:$49.99
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series)
ISBN-10: 0201633612
ISBN-13: 0785342633610
List Price:$59.99
Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
ISBN-10: 0735619670
ISBN-13: 9780735619678
List Price:$49.99
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series)
ISBN-10: 0201633612
ISBN-13: 9780201633610
List Price:$59.99
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
ISBN-10: 020161622X
ISBN-13: 9780201616224
List Price:$49.99
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (Second Edition)
ISBN-10: 0932633439
ISBN-13: 9780932633439
List Price:$33.95
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
ISBN-10: 020161622X
ISBN-13: 0785342616224
List Price:$45.99
Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules
ISBN-10: 1556159005
ISBN-13: 9781556159008
List Price:$35.00
Rapid Development
ISBN-10: 1556159005
ISBN-13: 0790145590053
List Price:$35.00
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Since the first publication of The Mythical Man-Month in 1975, no software engineer's bookshelf has been complete without it. Many software engineers and computer scientists have claimed to be "on their second or third copy" of the book. Now, Addison-Wesley is proud to present the 20th anniversary edition-and first revised edition ever-of Fred Brooks's now legendary collection of essays on the management of computer programming projects. The 20th Anniversary edition is an updated, enhanced re-release of the Brooks classic. Included are all of the existing essays that were originally presented, with the addition of three new essays assessing the current status of software project management. Brooks's well-known 1986 article, No Silver Bullet, is also included. This 20th Anniversary edition is a major event in computer publishing.
Interesting case study
| Customer Rating: | The first half of the book is a case study of the development of OS/360 in the 1970s: what the problems were, what was tried, what worked and what didn't. While I (and probably many others) snicker at the state of technology then compared to what it is now, I feel that the lessons Brooks learned (and happily relays to the reader) are still relevant and valuable. You certainly will have to abstract the methodology to the current technology we have today, but managerial lessons, as I said, are still relevant, mostly because people haven't changed that much. Basically, adding more people to already-late projects makes things worse. All of the communication and documentation that goes along with large projects are 100% necessary, and the documentation should be about 90% complete before coding starts. I think a wiki would solve both of these issues in one shot, but that's me. The last half of the book is mostly an inner dialogue by Brooks about what he thinks of the lessons he preached, what other people in the industry have said about his book, and his responses to it.
I think this is a definite must-read for anyone that programs on large software projects or manages large software projects. Brooks comes right out and says at the beginning that other engineering disciplines already know about all of the project management overhead, which I agree with, because I am in one of those other disciplines. Apparently the programming people don't see it necessary to teach project management as part of a bachelor's degree program, which might explain a lot of the larger programs in the past few decades. I have to admit though, the entire computer industry, both hardware and software, has been through a tumultuous and extraordinarily rapid history. Other disciplines have a much longer history book from which to reflect and design better processes, management or otherwise.
Finally, the prose is dry sometimes awkward, which I suppose is typical of the professor types with delusions of eloquence. Despite that, I thought it was overall an easy read, though not as humorous and engaging as some of the other software books I've been through. |
Software Development
| Customer Rating: | The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering is a book on software project management by Fred Brooks, whose central theme is that "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." This idea is known as Brooks's law, and is presented along with the second-system effect and advocacy of prototyping. The work was first published in 1975, and republished as an anniversary edition in 1995 (ISBN 0-201-83595-9) with the essay "No Silver Bullet" and commentary by the author.
Brooks's observations are based on his experiences at IBM while managing the development of OS/360. He had mistakenly added more workers to a project falling behind schedule. He also made the mistake of asserting that one project -- writing an Algol compiler -- would require six months--regardless of the number of workers involved (it required longer). The tendency for managers to repeat such errors in project development led Brooks to quip that his book is called "The Bible of Software Engineering" because "everybody reads it but nobody does anything about it!" |
Excellent & Highly Recommended Book
| Customer Rating: | | I have read this book twice now. Once in college and once again now 5 years later. While I did not get much out of it 5 years ago, now that I have been in the industry a few years, it is a VERY good re-read. |
Required Reading For Anyone Serious About Software Development
| Customer Rating: | | 30 Years later this book is still highly relevent. If your project is in trouble, don't add bodies! |
seminal classic
| Customer Rating: | | Fred Brooks, the author, is the individual primarily responsible for the IBM System/360, arguably the most successful computer software system built to this point. He is also primarily responsible for the IBM OS/360, which was not as successful. You may find that his frank and honest assessment of why one was successful and one was not provides a map of a right way to develop software and an alert system for what can go wrong. Because of this and the distilled thought and experience present in the book, it would be difficult to find a resource that could better prepare you to develop good software. |
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