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If the code was developed in less than 8.5 years, it seems like the answer must be yes based on their previous claims.
by michaelmior 6y ago
If the code was developed in less than 8.5 years, it seems like the answer must be yes based on their previous claims.
- gambiting 6y agoWell I mean if something requires 8 man years of work you can do it in a year with 8 people. Not always, but usually.
- agravier 6y agoOn the contrary, such linear scaling would be quite exceptional. I'm speaking from experience but you don't need to trust me; I invite you read any book on software engineering management, starting from The Mythical Man-Month by Brooks.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agothe mythical man month was first published in 1975, I think the typical applications programmers work on today have changed significantly since then and encompass many different disciplines (to be thought professional) - so many disciplines that one developer is likely to be the master of all. It is true that there is a communication overhead to adding more people so it will not scale linearly, but if a single developer has taken 8 years to build something in our era it seems likely that having 8 people might get it done say 1 and a half to two years.
- markwkw 6y agoI would claim that if something requires 8 man years, that it will most definitely take more than a year to develop with 8 people. Communication takes time, coordination takes time, there is an incremental cost to each news person added to a team. From experience, perhaps with 2-3 people who happen to gel well together you may get close to proportional scaling of output, but with 8 it’s really unlikely in the real world.
- watwut 6y agoI would find it extremely unlikely to work that way.