The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering [Paperback]

Frederick Phillips Brooks (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley (January 1975)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201006502
• ISBN-13: 978-0201006506
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #372,392 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., is Kenan Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was an architect of the IBM Stretch and Harvest computers. He was Corporate Project Manager for the System/360, including development of the System/360 computer family hardware and the decision to switch computer byte size from 6 to 8 bits. He then managed the initial development of the Operating System/360 software suite: operating system, 16 compilers, communications, and utilities.

He founded the UNC Department of Computer Science in 1964 and chaired it for 20 years. His research there has been in computer architecture, software engineering, and interactive 3-D computer graphics (protein visualization graphics and "virtual reality"). His best-known books are The Mythical Man-Month (1975, 1995); Computer Architecture: Concepts and Evolution (with G.A. Blaauw, 1997); and The Design of Design (2010).

Dr. Brooks has received the National Medal of Technology, the A.M. Turing award of the ACM, the Bower Award and Prize of the Franklin Institute, the John von Neumann Medal of the IEEE, and others. He is a member of the U.S. National Academies of Engineering and of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Academy of Engineering (U.K.) and of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He became a Christian at age 31 and has taught an adult Sunday school class for 35 years. He chaired the Executive Committee for the 1973 Research Triangle Billy Graham Crusade. He and Mrs. Nancy Greenwood Brooks are faculty advisors to a graduate student chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. They have three children and nine grandchildren.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Prophetic -- but of its time, December 20, 1999

By 

Engineer (London, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (Paperback)

There really are very few software engineering books written in 1975 that are worth reading today. Brooks remains powerful stuff because large system projects are still often disastrous. We are not often bothered by the flowcharts that Brooks dislikes, but the disorganized projects, endless meetings, problems of scaling, unhelpful documentation and inflexible systems are certainly still with us.

I was struck recently by the parallels with Kent Beck's Extreme Programming: Brooks had in his way foreseen much of what this recent movement has been urging.

Brooks' classic book underlies much systems engineering thinking, and his example along with the frightening story of OS/360, enlivened with Brooks' inimitable anecdotes and illustrations, remains essential reading.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must read for anyone dealing regularly with complexity., October 12, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (Paperback)

This is a classic tale of managment philosophy and software engineering. It contains some of the best descriptions of human behavior and engineering intuition ever distilled into book format. A must read for anyone managing, or working on, complex projects of any sort.

5.0 out of 5 stars A good, undying, informative, inspiring and enjoyable read!, October 16, 2010

By 

Book Glutton - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (Paperback)

I learned by my own mistakes the meaning of the expression, "You can pay me now or pay me later." There are few or sometimes no short-cuts in software or hardware development or engineering, or electronics in general. Fred Brooks, best known as the "father of the IBM System 360," and after 30 years still holds the title of the most influential book on software project management, likened it to pregnancy. He said you can add all the women you want "to the project" and still, it will take nine months! That's why, in managing software development projects, I learned to spend ample time with the software developers beforehand. Otherwise, I would inevitably spend the time with them afterwards. I was the one knowing the design. I had the "big picture" that needed to be communicated to them.

In his book, Brooks described the foibles of the early design teams and programming at IBM. From his own mistakes, he came up with snappy principles like "If you don't have time to do it right the first time, when will you find time to do it over?" He also coined what became known as the "Second-System Approach," which basically said "by the time you finish developing a system, you know what you should have done"--therefore, throw it away and start from scratch again. He identified the corruptible optimism of good intentions that truly but erroneously believed, for most of the project, that the work was 90% done or that debugging was 99% done most of the time. He insisted, "Ask whenever there's a doubt. NEVER assume anything."

This book is filled with timeless development advice by a master from a previous age. The advice, however, is as valuable now as it was then.

A good, undying, informative, inspiring and enjoyable read!