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
An ancient adage warns, "Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.
How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.
System debugging has always been a graveyard-shift occupation, like astronomy.
Present to inform, not to impress. If you inform, you will impress.
Originality is no excuse for ignorance.
The first step toward the management of disease was replacement of demon theories and humours theories by the germ theory. That very step, the beginning of hope, in itself dashed all hopes of magical solutions. It told workers that progress would be made stepwise, at great effort, and that a persistent, unremitting care would have to be paid to a discipline of cleanliness. So it is with software engineering today.
To only a fraction of the human race does God give the privilege of earning one's bread doing what one would have gladly pursued free, for passion.
Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowcharts; they'll be obvious.
Mediocre design provably wastes the world's resources, corrupts the environment, affects international competitiveness. Design is important.
It is very difficult to make a vigorous, plausible, and job-risking defense of an estimate that is derived by no quantitative method, supported by little data, and certified chiefly by the hunches of the managers
A scientist builds in order to learn; an engineer learns in order to build.
The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.
I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to product quality.
The Waterfall Model is wrong and harmful; we must outgrow it.