Mythical Man Month

I finished re-reading the Mythical Man Month today. It was a good read, and, just as when I read it just after the 20th anniversary edition came out, still very relevant to software development today.

I found Brooks’ enthusiasm and attitude to be quite compelling; it’s so obvious that he loves his work. This quote from the epilogue sums it up and reminds me not to be so grouchy; “To only a fraction of the human race does God give the privilege of earning one’s bread doing what one would have gladly pursued free, for passion. I am very thankful.” Me too.

One thing that struck me is that, whilst in general I agree with the central theme of No Silver Bullet, I think perhaps there are serious gains that can be made in many corporate programming shops just by removing all the unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles that they seem to delight in putting in the way of their programmers… Perhaps the corporates do have a silver bullet out there…