Everything I needed to know about taking on software projects. "Prepare to throw one away".
The insights from reading this book years ago certainly helped me navigate project management as a rescue guy. By the time I was hired, the failing project was already part way through the experience that Brooks' book is based on, and he was writing the OS!!!
He writes about the origin of the svc (supervisor call) in OS360. They needed a way to keep track of them as they were popping up from all over, so they made a list, and you added yours to it, then other groups could check the list before they wrote another version of the same function.
Sounds like the noob chose to live at 6th and Market. That's where you go after you lose that brogrammer edge, not when you move here to find your fortune.
I recall the advice Steve Martin's adopted mother in The Jerk gave him, "find your special purpose", and how that worked out for him. It all starts by working at the circus.
Your fortune will find you when you find your special purpose.
he makes some excellent points, or should I say hypothoses?
drop 25% of the features to reduce complexity by half. I suppose this is why templates and re-usable code appeal to managers moreso than software developers. one sees the clock and the other sees something that would be much more beautiful after a redo.
my son learned in mechanical engineering school that if you want the best design and the best device, don't ask the builder to design the device. the builder will make decisions based on the complications of the build process and the desire to build. the designer would focus on the utility of the device and defer thinking to the builder on how to get the thing built.
People with different Myers Briggs score do better in pair programming. Raise your hand if that makes your brain hurt.
Mythical Man Month is the classic book on this, based on the OS360 project at IBM.
Complexity drives time to complete toward infinity. Says the moth to the flame, "you're so beautiful". Says the teacher to the class, "let's not get ahead of ourselves".
A fellow named Francis Frank used to teach project management as a position that sits between the hydrant and the dog. The scrum master takes that role now, looking for a favorable outcome from myers briggs score diversity.
I especially like the point that defects are not a factor of geographic distance, but of distance on the org chart.
I remember when you asked that question at google i/o.
We're using gwt for a reference implementation of itemscript, an open source json schema project. It does take some time to get it set up right, but when you do...
GWT is reveling against it's next constraint right now, the support of a growing developer base, not all within Google.
the programming contest will get easier as higher level abstractions hide the tricky stuff, but the idea contest will also be liberated. Imagine a world where you could for example launch FMyLife.com without worring about IE6.
lightweight interfaces will be able to power sophisticated implementations, and someone has to write those.
the market size will increase. dogs will be able to understand complex event loops, just as before.
The insights from reading this book years ago certainly helped me navigate project management as a rescue guy. By the time I was hired, the failing project was already part way through the experience that Brooks' book is based on, and he was writing the OS!!!
He writes about the origin of the svc (supervisor call) in OS360. They needed a way to keep track of them as they were popping up from all over, so they made a list, and you added yours to it, then other groups could check the list before they wrote another version of the same function.