5 ms·

Having read "the mythical man-month" I came to conclusion that majority of the problems we have today were discovered an described by the 1970-ies.

by DenisM 13y ago

mathattack 13y ago
Great book. He anticipates a lot of the problems, and "Adding idiots at the end" rarely fixes things. (Look at the Obamaacare website) It's been a while since I've read it, but I don't think he captured the benefits from agility.
- taeric 13y ago
  I would not be surprised to find that someday we understand why some projects work from agile, and see that it basically comes back to the "vision" observation in Mythical Man Month. Of course, this really just betrays that I want that to happen. So... take it for what its worth.
- jerf 13y ago
  He mentions the importance of automated tested once or twice I think, but it isn't hammered on as a modern Agilist would. But, remember, 1970 was a different world. You may literally have not had room to include unit tests in your code, or literally be unable to afford the sort of abstractions that would enable unit testing, for instance.Other parts of that book talk about the difficulty of squeezing bytes out of pages. A lot of modern Agile practices are not possible back then, or are so different as to be entirely different things. TDD would probably get laughed at by all, for instance. "What, you want me to waste my precious timeshare time to run tests I know are going to fail?"
  - pnathan 13y ago
    I don't have the reference, but I read somewhere several years ago when digging through old journals that regular testing was part of the Project Mercury? Gemini? software development process.
    - Someone 13y ago
      http://www.testingreferences.com/testinghistory.php http://www.testingreferences.com/testinghistory.php, via Google, leads me to Google: http://books.google.nl/books?id=76rnV5Exs50C&lpg=PA81&ots=o800RpISOY&dq=project%20mercury%20weinberg&pg=PA81#v=onepage&q=project%20mercury%20weinberg&f=false http://books.google.nl/books?id=76rnV5Exs50C&lpg=PA81&ots=o8... "Project Mercury was done with short half-day iterations. [...] Tests were planned and written in advance of each micro-increment"
gaius 13y ago
The majority of everything in software was discovered by the 70s. Since then we have been reinventing the wheel every 5-10 years on better hardware.
- desireco42 13y ago
  This is so true. And not even amusing, it is like we can't come up with anything new, we even go backwards.
  - gboudrias 13y ago
    It's the politics that change. Sometimes we use a different tool to prove a point. What we lose in productivity we sometimes make back in social progress (ex: yanking control away from certain corporations). I do hate the reinvention of the wheel too, but it's not all pointless.
- fit2rule 13y ago
  I don't think hardware has anything to do with it. I think the most important factor in this evolutionary cycle is that every 4 - 6 years, new Computer Science/Software Developer STUDENTS enter the market, spend a few years catching up, and then trying to re-invent everything. Rediscovering the territory that they'd not really learned that the industry had already proceeded through at much greater pace than Academia.
  - gaius 13y ago
    No, I mean hardware is genuinely progressing. Software is going in circles. It's a culture thing. Legacy code should mean "battle tested code" not "boring, let's replace it!" We are so busy replacing perfectly working code with the latest fashion that we never advance.
    - fit2rule 13y ago
      Yeah - and I mean that its not being driven by the hardware folks, but in fact is a cultural phenomenon derived from the academia world and industrial world having different gears. Yes, hardware is progressing (though we've reached a few limits) at an amazing pace - and we've pushed technology into quite a lot of cracks and crevices in the last 40 years (at least, thats as long as I've been in the computer scene) .. but what I observe is that, every 3 - 6 years, there are cycles of entropy and creation which are a result of the endless churn of 1. Industry -> 2. Academia -> GOTO 1. Today's Rubyist is tomorrow's Cobol'er. It goes on and on, and this is - in my opinion - a people thing. Not a hardware thing.

Having read "the mythical man-month" I came to conclusion that majority of the problems we have today were discovered an described by the 1970-ies.

by DenisM 13y ago

Having read "the mythical man-month" I came to conclusion that majority of the problems we have today were discovered an described by the 1970-ies.

mathattack 13y ago

Great book. He anticipates a lot of the problems, and "Adding idiots at the end" rarely fixes things. (Look at the Obamaacare website) It's been a while since I've read it, but I don't think he captured the benefits from agility.

taeric 13y ago
I would not be surprised to find that someday we understand why some projects work from agile, and see that it basically comes back to the "vision" observation in Mythical Man Month. Of course, this really just betrays that I want that to happen. So... take it for what its worth.
jerf 13y ago
He mentions the importance of automated tested once or twice I think, but it isn't hammered on as a modern Agilist would. But, remember, 1970 was a different world. You may literally have not had room to include unit tests in your code, or literally be unable to afford the sort of abstractions that would enable unit testing, for instance.Other parts of that book talk about the difficulty of squeezing bytes out of pages. A lot of modern Agile practices are not possible back then, or are so different as to be entirely different things. TDD would probably get laughed at by all, for instance. "What, you want me to waste my precious timeshare time to run tests I know are going to fail?"
- pnathan 13y ago
  I don't have the reference, but I read somewhere several years ago when digging through old journals that regular testing was part of the Project Mercury? Gemini? software development process.
  - Someone 13y ago
    http://www.testingreferences.com/testinghistory.php http://www.testingreferences.com/testinghistory.php, via Google, leads me to Google: http://books.google.nl/books?id=76rnV5Exs50C&lpg=PA81&ots=o800RpISOY&dq=project%20mercury%20weinberg&pg=PA81#v=onepage&q=project%20mercury%20weinberg&f=false http://books.google.nl/books?id=76rnV5Exs50C&lpg=PA81&ots=o8... "Project Mercury was done with short half-day iterations. [...] Tests were planned and written in advance of each micro-increment"

gaius 13y ago

The majority of everything in software was discovered by the 70s. Since then we have been reinventing the wheel every 5-10 years on better hardware.

desireco42 13y ago
This is so true. And not even amusing, it is like we can't come up with anything new, we even go backwards.
- gboudrias 13y ago
  It's the politics that change. Sometimes we use a different tool to prove a point. What we lose in productivity we sometimes make back in social progress (ex: yanking control away from certain corporations). I do hate the reinvention of the wheel too, but it's not all pointless.
fit2rule 13y ago
I don't think hardware has anything to do with it. I think the most important factor in this evolutionary cycle is that every 4 - 6 years, new Computer Science/Software Developer STUDENTS enter the market, spend a few years catching up, and then trying to re-invent everything. Rediscovering the territory that they'd not really learned that the industry had already proceeded through at much greater pace than Academia.
- gaius 13y ago
  No, I mean hardware is genuinely progressing. Software is going in circles. It's a culture thing. Legacy code should mean "battle tested code" not "boring, let's replace it!" We are so busy replacing perfectly working code with the latest fashion that we never advance.
  - fit2rule 13y ago
    Yeah - and I mean that its not being driven by the hardware folks, but in fact is a cultural phenomenon derived from the academia world and industrial world having different gears. Yes, hardware is progressing (though we've reached a few limits) at an amazing pace - and we've pushed technology into quite a lot of cracks and crevices in the last 40 years (at least, thats as long as I've been in the computer scene) .. but what I observe is that, every 3 - 6 years, there are cycles of entropy and creation which are a result of the endless churn of 1. Industry -> 2. Academia -> GOTO 1. Today's Rubyist is tomorrow's Cobol'er. It goes on and on, and this is - in my opinion - a people thing. Not a hardware thing.