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During the last month I’ve been reading the quoted-often-but-followed-rarely Mythical Man-Month. What a nice book!
Fred Brooks starts the book talking about the programming art. Why is it fun, after all? He points many reasons and, among them, the joy of always learning. I totally agree with him, and if you don’t like it, please stop working as a programmer.
The book is just great. Despite my own fault of reading it only now, when I’m 26 and after graduating I got shocked by the unpopularity of the book here in Brazil. At my workplace, with 70 programmers I’m almost sure that nobody has read it (including the bosses), insane!
Why is the book special? Man, almost all those things you hear agilists talk about were first written in the MM-M! For example, about documentation:
“As a principal objective, we must attempt to minimize the burden of documentation, the burden neither we nor our predecessors have been able to bear successfully. An approach. The first notion is to use the parts of the program that have to be there anyway…”
It’s impressive how this guy was able to figure out all those problems in the software production field and, still better, propose solutions! It’s impressive how he was able to write a book so clear in 1975, when the field was in its early infancy (I believe it’s still in the infancy).
Obviously, there are one or two chapters which are no longer relevant and some predictions which did not come true, but the book as a whole is invaluable. I’ve read the anniversary edition, and if you have access to it, I would recommend that you first read the last chapter, in which Brooks gives a retrospective of all the “mistakes” made in the first edition.
Finally, out of the almost 300 pages, I’ve got 95 notes and marks on my kindle. An average of 1 note for each 3 pages is quite impressive for a book from 1975, isn’t it? So, if you still wonder if the book is worth your time, have no doubts from now on.
