The Mythical Man-month
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I've been reading the Mythical Man-month.
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@kt_ said in The Mythical Man-month:
@kt_ said in The Mythical Man-month:
I've been reading the Mythical Man-month.
And?
There's no and at the end of that statement. That's it. I just wanted to show you how I'm much better than you.
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I witnessed a conversation in this vein.
People are fucking stupid.
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@kt_ do you agree with it?
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Today, I saw a guy wearing this tee:
I wanted to punch him in the face, but he was on a bike. I ran and tried to catch him, but he was too fast. I hoped that if I'd punched him at the right angle and spot, he'd broke both his hands and he would never be able to program ever again.
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@kt_ do I agree with the notion that arbitrarily adding a person to a team does not mean you go from x units of production to x+1 units of production? Of course. The point is that it is mythical, we all knew it, and the book we can give to mangler types to explain what we already could see that more people makes things harder to do owing to cult of personality and the simple increased need for communication and synchronisation.
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@kt_ said in The Mythical Man-month:
There's no and at the end of that statement. That's it. I just wanted to show you how much better than you I am.
Hah! I read it years ago.
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@kt_ said in The Mythical Man-month:
I wanted to punch him in the face, but he was on a bike. I ran and tried to catch him, but he was too fast. I hoped that if I punched him at the right angle and spot, he'd broke both his hands and he would never be able to program ever again.
That's not bad, but of course the correct move is to run him down with your car.
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@arantor said in The Mythical Man-month:
@kt_ do I agree with the notion that arbitrarily adding a person to a team does not mean you go from x units of production to x+1 units of production? Of course. The point is that it is mythical, we all knew it, and the book we can give to mangler types to explain what we already could see that more people makes things harder to do owing to cult of personality and the simple increased need for communication and synchronisation.
Ah, you meant if I agree with the book! I thought you meant if I agreed that the person who read it is a smarter one.
Well, there are a few nifty ideas in there and it's well written, so it has this aura of timelessness.
I'm not really sure about the essay about team organization, but I've never worked in a project as huge as OS/360, so I really don't know. The surgical team idea seems bogus, though.
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@boomzilla said in The Mythical Man-month:
@kt_ said in The Mythical Man-month:
I wanted to punch him in the face, but he was on a bike. I ran and tried to catch him, but he was too fast. I hoped that if I punched him at the right angle and spot, he'd broke both his hands and he would never be able to program ever again.
That's not bad, but of course the correct move is to run him down with your car.
Hey! I'm not an American!
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@kt_ having read it does not make you smarter.
It does make you more knowledgeable, which idiots think is smarter anyway.
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@arantor said in The Mythical Man-month:
@kt_ having read it does not make you smarter.
It does make you more knowledgeable, which idiots think is smarter anyway.
I remember hearing this once:
Travel broadens the mind, but only if it's already broad.
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@kt_ said in The Mythical Man-month:
@boomzilla said in The Mythical Man-month:
@kt_ said in The Mythical Man-month:
I wanted to punch him in the face, but he was on a bike. I ran and tried to catch him, but he was too fast. I hoped that if I punched him at the right angle and spot, he'd broke both his hands and he would never be able to program ever again.
That's not bad, but of course the correct move is to run him down with your car.
Hey! I'm not an American!
That's why I didn't suggest you shoot him with your glove box gun.
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@arantor said in The Mythical Man-month:
@kt_ having read it does not make you smarter.
It does make you more knowledgeable, which idiots think is smarter anyway.
Knowing lots of things is a great way to seem smart. All you have to do is make educated guesses with complete confidence. It's interpolation as opposed to extrapolation. Having a large vocabulary also helps snow the gullible.
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@benjamin-hall said in The Mythical Man-month:
@arantor said in The Mythical Man-month:
@kt_ having read it does not make you smarter.
It does make you more knowledgeable, which idiots think is smarter anyway.
Knowing lots of things is a great way to seem smart. All you have to do is make educated guesses with complete confidence. It's interpolation as opposed to extrapolation. Having a large vocabulary also helps snow the gullible.
Wearing a lab coat helps, too!
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@kt_ I wouldn't know. I'm a theorist. We're not allowed in experimental areas because our very presence ruins experiments.
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@benjamin-hall said in The Mythical Man-month:
@kt_ I wouldn't know. I'm a theorist. We're not allowed in experimental areas because our very presence ruins experiments.
Just wear a lab coat to a grocery store. As an experiment!
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@kt_ I've thought about such antics, but lab coats (especially in my size) are expensive...
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@benjamin-hall said in The Mythical Man-month:
@kt_ I've thought about such antics, but lab coats (especially in my size) are expensive...
You must be prepared to make sacrifices! For science! For experiments! For the ladies!
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@benjamin-hall said in The Mythical Man-month:
@kt_ I've thought about such antics, but lab coats (especially in my size) are expensive...
Humm... I did have a lab coat when I was in secondary school because I was a biology student and have to wear that when dissecting white mouse. I remember that at least it's less expensive than a pair of jeans.
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@cheong All the ones I've seen have been $30+. That's expensive for something I wouldn't wear much. If I taught advanced or AP chemistry (instead of chemistry for those afraid of math) I might want one, but I'm not.
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@benjamin-hall Meh, you can pick up cheap ones at a thrift store. I have one and don't even remember why. :D
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@kt_ said in The Mythical Man-month:
@benjamin-hall said in The Mythical Man-month:
@kt_ I wouldn't know. I'm a theorist. We're not allowed in experimental areas because our very presence ruins experiments.
Just wear a lab coat to a grocery store. As an experiment!
I would do that, but I fear I might get mistaken by that one Food Network guy...
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@cheong said in The Mythical Man-month:
@benjamin-hall said in The Mythical Man-month:
@kt_ I've thought about such antics, but lab coats (especially in my size) are expensive...
Humm... I did have a lab coat when I was in secondary school because I was a biology student and have to wear that when dissecting white mouse. I remember that at least it's less expensive than a pair of jeans.
You must've been as popular as the Nokia 3310 kids are now!
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@heterodox said in The Mythical Man-month:
@benjamin-hall Meh, you can pick up cheap ones at a thrift store. I have one and don't even remember why. :D
That's the best kind of possession!
Listen, I recently found in my apartment a lab coat, a huge barrel of lubricant, a purple dildo and a plain ticket to the city where lives. And I don't even remember why. :D
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@kt_ said in The Mythical Man-month:
@heterodox said in The Mythical Man-month:
@benjamin-hall Meh, you can pick up cheap ones at a thrift store. I have one and don't even remember why. :D
That's the best kind of possession!
Listen, I recently found in my apartment a lab coat, a huge barrel of lubricant, a purple dildo and a plain ticket to the city where lives. And I don't even remember why. :D
Reminds me of a couple of fun games to play in a supermarket.
One is: you have £10 and a limit of 10 items. Buy the best things to make the cashier look at you funny
Another: buy lots of alcohol, cigarettes, various other decidedly adult things, and a pack of nappies. When you get the total, look through your wallet, count your money, and ask to take the nappies off
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@kt_ said in The Mythical Man-month:
I've been reading the Mythical Man-month.
so have I.
as part of my "path to promotion planning" my boss and I are reading it as a book club sort of thing. it's..... well the book is pretty neat and gives me a lot to think about, even if i don't agree with what it says literally i at least agree that it brings up good points and seems to be mroe aimed at instilling knowledge and critical thinking than it is intended to be a handbook of "do this and success!"
If only the book club meetings aren't so..... awkward.....
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@kt_ and I have read it completely in two languages.
It's 2017 now and old Brooksy still reads as if he wrote that today. I mean — with all agile shit even, it's the Ecclesiastes of programming.
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@wft said in The Mythical Man-month:
@kt_ and I have read it completely in two languages.
It's 2017 now and old Brooksy still reads as if he wrote that today. I mean — with all agile shit even, it's the Ecclesiastes of programming.
Word, dog. Especially this passage:
Consider the IBM APL interactive software system. It rents for $400 per month and, when used, takes at least 160 K bytes of memory. On a Model 165, memory rents for about $12 per kilobyte per month. If the program is available full-time, one pays $400 software rent and $1920 memory rent for using the program. If one uses the APL system only four hours a day, the costs are $400 software rent and $320 memory rent per month.
Seriously though, this is interesting:
Where a new system concept or new technology is used, one has to build a system to throw away, for even the best planning is not so omniscient as to get it right the first time.
The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. The only question is whether to plan in advance to build a throwaway, or to promise to deliver the throwaway to customers.
Reminds me of a team lead of one our projects who said that the first version of the system they built was awful and that they later rewrote it from scratch.
It's a shame they didn't learn anything in their first pass and if they did, the software must've been so awful it must've been totally unmaintainable, because the current one is almost unmaintainable.
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@kt_ said in The Mythical Man-month:
Just wear a lab coat to a grocery store. As an experiment!
Better yet, come to your software development job with a white lab coat, protection glasses and rubber gloves.