Title: The Mythical Man-Month
Author: Fredrick P. Brooks, JR.
Summary:
The author begins by explaining why computer software is like a werewolf. With a werewolf, you have an innocent harmless human transform into a horrid beast. Likewise, software projects can see harmless and simple, but then spiral into a difficult project with missed deadlines and bad results. The author talks about why there will be no silver bullet that can make software better by an order of magnitude like hardware has become. He starts by explaining that it is not that software progresses unnaturally slow, but that hardware progresses unnaturally fast. He then discusses why it is so difficult for software to make order of magnitude leaps due to things such as invisibility. He finishes with a discussion of several technologies that were thought to make programming better by an order of magnitude, but only slightly made things better. The ending of the chapters is a rebuttal to several writers that challenged the belief that no silver bullet exists.
Discussion:
I completely agree with the author that there will be no silver bullet that makes programming better by an order of magnitude. While good design practices and technology principals such as object oriented programming are very helpful, software is a work of art and can be rushed no more than a painting or a novel.
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