3 ms·

What sad language do you use? :(

• glymor 18y ago
  I assume OS/360 was written in assembler so it would have been even more true for Fred Brooks. Except he had his crazy crap about being the "surgeon" only writing specs and leaving the team to the lesser work so that might explain his viewpoint.
  • cubicle67 18y ago
    I think you may be wrong on the job of the surgeon. I've loaned my copy to someone at the moment, but from memory the surgeon considered to be the most skilled member of the team and was given the most difficult work. Classifying this as 'only writing specs' is disingenuous.
    • 10ren 18y ago
      I agree it wasn't just "writing specs", but I think the parent meant that the surgeon could offload the lesser repetitive work. I think it was more about removing distractions. IIRC I think there was a "tools specialist" on the surgeon team. I find writing tools to support my work very helpful; and they are interesting, challenging and rewarding to write, but they do take headspace away from the main task. I think this is the idea of the surgeon team. There was also a documenter; which is also very helpful but difficult to do well. I'm not sure why this never took off (wrong ratios? people don't get along? communicating with the team is itself adds too much overhead? the surgeon's work is too raw for that support?), but I find it helpful to think in terms of these roles within myself.