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Yeah doing 30 man years of software in 4 weeks is nothing to brag about. It's like assuming putting 9 women together can output a baby in a single month.

by j7ake 9y ago

varjag 9y ago
So your opinion is parallelizing software development is impossible? Interesting.
- sushibowl 9y ago
  This is not an unorthodox or unreasonable position. The Mythical Man-Month is a classic text in software engineering and project management and essentially argues this very point. The analogy to child birth is actually also a classic one made originally by the author. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law
  - varjag 9y ago
    Of course just like everyone on HN am aware of the book and heard this quote a billion+ times. And of course I know it's badly misused in this particular case (as it often is).
    - mrguyorama 9y ago
      software development parallelization works about as well as it does for actual software, ie non-linearly at best. Add to that overhead/mistakes/difficulties caused by "synchronization" and you come to the conclusion that a significant amount of that "30 man years" of software had to be just discarded when rebuilt
      - varjag 9y ago
        But consider that the existing "30 man years" design had couple year calendar time for it at most. Doesn't that say something about the task at hand? EDIT guess this is just rephrasing of your point, in a way.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  The more people you put on a single project, the more communication costs - which grow with n! - start to dominate. The solution to that is to structure the project into independent parts that can be done in parallel by smaller amount of people, thus vastly reducing communication waste. But whether or not you can divide your project in such a way is a question of its scope, and of design decisions you make.
  - varjag 9y ago
    My only point was that the quote is often misused and is highly contextual. There are countless projects where work can be efficiently parallelized. Cramming 30 man years in a month still sounds like a death march but we do know that say Linux kernel which by now is probably a million(†) man-year effort was done faster than in geological time. † Ok exaggerating but it is huge and with fast paced change throughout whole codebase.

Yeah doing 30 man years of software in 4 weeks is nothing to brag about. It's like assuming putting 9 women together can output a baby in a single month.

by j7ake 9y ago

Yeah doing 30 man years of software in 4 weeks is nothing to brag about. It's like assuming putting 9 women together can output a baby in a single month.

varjag 9y ago

So your opinion is parallelizing software development is impossible? Interesting.

sushibowl 9y ago
This is not an unorthodox or unreasonable position. The Mythical Man-Month is a classic text in software engineering and project management and essentially argues this very point. The analogy to child birth is actually also a classic one made originally by the author. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law
- varjag 9y ago
  Of course just like everyone on HN am aware of the book and heard this quote a billion+ times. And of course I know it's badly misused in this particular case (as it often is).
  - mrguyorama 9y ago
    software development parallelization works about as well as it does for actual software, ie non-linearly at best. Add to that overhead/mistakes/difficulties caused by "synchronization" and you come to the conclusion that a significant amount of that "30 man years" of software had to be just discarded when rebuilt
    - varjag 9y ago
      But consider that the existing "30 man years" design had couple year calendar time for it at most. Doesn't that say something about the task at hand? EDIT guess this is just rephrasing of your point, in a way.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
The more people you put on a single project, the more communication costs - which grow with n! - start to dominate. The solution to that is to structure the project into independent parts that can be done in parallel by smaller amount of people, thus vastly reducing communication waste. But whether or not you can divide your project in such a way is a question of its scope, and of design decisions you make.
- varjag 9y ago
  My only point was that the quote is often misused and is highly contextual. There are countless projects where work can be efficiently parallelized. Cramming 30 man years in a month still sounds like a death march but we do know that say Linux kernel which by now is probably a million(†) man-year effort was done faster than in geological time. † Ok exaggerating but it is huge and with fast paced change throughout whole codebase.