Fred Brooks
Fred Brooks
Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr.is an American computer architect, software engineer, and computer scientist, best known for managing the development of IBM's System/360 family of computers and the OS/360 software support package, then later writing candidly about the process in his seminal book The Mythical Man-Month. Brooks has received many awards, including the National Medal of Technology in 1985 and the Turing Award in 1999...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth19 April 1931
CountryUnited States of America
The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial (20-50 percent) chance of introducing another. So the whole process is two steps forward and one step back..
The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. Hence plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.
There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity.
A basic principle of data processing teaches the folly of trying to maintain independent files in synchonism.
The boss must first distinguish between action information and status information. He must discipline himself not to act on problems his managers can solve, and never to act on problems when he is explicitly reviewing status.
More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined.
The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one. Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity often abstracts away its essence.
Job Control Language is the worst programming language ever designed anywhere by anybody for any purpose.
Even the best planning is not so omniscient as to get it right the first time.
Plan to throw one (implementation) away; you will, anyhow.
Product procedure...must securely protect the crown jewels, but, equally important, it must eschew building high fences around the garbage cans.
Systematically identity top designers as early as possible. The best are often not the most experienced.
Consensus processes starve innovative design by eating the resource.
Predictability and great design are not friends.