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We already are. Everyone nowadays moves much faster than when Brooks was writing. Who remembers a world where wanting a hash table meant you coded a hash table,
by jerf 3y ago
We already are. Everyone nowadays moves much faster than when Brooks was writing. Who remembers a world where wanting a hash table meant you coded a hash table, and looked like a wizard while doing it? Now our problem with hash tables is people using them too freely without understanding the consequences.
- namaria 3y agoThe point of the quote is that hard problems require hard solutions. The mentality of seeking easy solutions is the problem. It took decades to yield the improvements we've seen since Brooks was active (in the 60s!). And still here we are, with hundreds of SaaS offerings that promise to deliver the remedy to all your systemic and organizational ills, and turns out to be yet another snowflake in a growing pile. We dig ourselves deeper into complexity year after year because that's what people are incentivized to do. Yet the warning that we should take a systemic view and be patient has been with us for two generations now.
- kaba0 3y agoIt literally was the point of Brooks that the only significant productivity boost is using other people’s software.