4 ms·

This might be just me, but Brooks explicitly put a decade time tag on his 1986 prediction, complicating the authors's comparisons from ~three decades later. I g

This might be just me, but Brooks explicitly put a decade time tag on his 1986 prediction, complicating the authors's comparisons from ~three decades later. I guess the way to tell would be to have people or teams build examples of 1986 level-of-complexity software and see how long it takes them.

rcthompson 7y ago
That's fine for Brooks, but the OP is entirely correct that people still routinely cite the "no silver bullet" doctrine 3 decades later. So it's still worth revisiting even if it's technically 2 decades past its expiration date.
- ticmasta 7y ago
  Brooks revisits NSB 20 years after the fact and makes pretty strong arguments that specific intervening technologies have not disproved his original conclusions. I think we could do the same today. The author of this post conflates better with a 10x improvement from a few anecdotal experiences that are themselves extremely accidental to the act of creating software. He may have a point about the large volume of accidental improvement areas remaining but I think this is because like the JS ecosystem they are growing faster than we solve them. I think the reality is likely the author is themselves a 10x improvement over their decade-past self.
  - rcthompson 7y ago
    > Brooks revisits NSB 20 years after the fact Do you have a link to this? I'd like to read it.
    - pjmorris 7y ago
      Closest thing I could find was a report [0] on a 2007 panel discussion with Brooks at OOPSLA, titled “No Silver Bullet” Reloaded – A Retrospective on “Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering" Here's [1] a link to his 1995 update, an excerpt from an anniversary edition of 'The Mythical Man Month' [0] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1297846.1297973 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1297846.1297973 [1] http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf
    - fiddlerwoaroof 7y ago
      I can't find a PDF, but it's a chapter in a newer edition of "The Mythical Man Month" called "no silver bullet refired"

rcthompson 7y ago

That's fine for Brooks, but the OP is entirely correct that people still routinely cite the "no silver bullet" doctrine 3 decades later. So it's still worth revisiting even if it's technically 2 decades past its expiration date.

ticmasta 7y ago
Brooks revisits NSB 20 years after the fact and makes pretty strong arguments that specific intervening technologies have not disproved his original conclusions. I think we could do the same today. The author of this post conflates better with a 10x improvement from a few anecdotal experiences that are themselves extremely accidental to the act of creating software. He may have a point about the large volume of accidental improvement areas remaining but I think this is because like the JS ecosystem they are growing faster than we solve them. I think the reality is likely the author is themselves a 10x improvement over their decade-past self.
- rcthompson 7y ago
  > Brooks revisits NSB 20 years after the fact Do you have a link to this? I'd like to read it.
  - pjmorris 7y ago
    Closest thing I could find was a report [0] on a 2007 panel discussion with Brooks at OOPSLA, titled “No Silver Bullet” Reloaded – A Retrospective on “Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering" Here's [1] a link to his 1995 update, an excerpt from an anniversary edition of 'The Mythical Man Month' [0] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1297846.1297973 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1297846.1297973 [1] http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf
  - fiddlerwoaroof 7y ago
    I can't find a PDF, but it's a chapter in a newer edition of "The Mythical Man Month" called "no silver bullet refired"