The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition)

Amazon.com Review:
The classic book on the human elements of softwareengineering. Software tools and development environments may havechanged in the 21 years since the first edition of this book, but thepeculiarly nonlinear economies of scale in collaborative work and thenature of individuals and groups has not changed an epsilon.If youwrite code or depend upon those who do, get this book as soon aspossible -- from Amazon.com Books, your library, or anyone else. You(and/or your colleagues) will be forever grateful. Very HighestRecommendation.

Product Description:
No book on software project management has been so influential and so timeless as The Mythical Man-Month. Now 20 years after the publication of his book, Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. (best known as the "father of the IBM System 360") revisits his original ideas and develops new thoughts and advice both for readers familiar with his work and for readers discovering it for the first time.

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Customer Reviews

Rating: - Should be required reading in any CSci/Management course
This book, although initially written 35 years ago, still has views and opinions that are still valid today.It is amazing how far technology has come, yet how little we have moved in the management of products.Plus, having the official definition of Brook's Law is a definite bonus.
Rating: - Expected more - borrow from library
I expected more from this book, though I found that while there are many good points in the book, I believe that there are much more succinct ways of saying them.I found that this book was hard to follow in many ways because the author contradicts himself later in the book.I also expected more data than what was provided.

This book gets a lot of hype, some of it well deserved, but the days of mainframes and PF-keyed terminals are long gone.I wasted a lot of time reading about how ... Read More
Rating: - Nothing to add
This is a landmark work, introduced some novel concepts like first, second and third system, representation of idea being the core of programming, conceptual integrity, essential Difficulties etc.

Resolving s/w issues demand an understanding of the problem, and this understanding can not be subsituted by mere increase in man-power. This is so called Brooks' law.
Rating: - Managment of computer projects
The art of computer programming appears to have aspects that are not seen in any other known discipline.Large programs are more complex than small ones.A program twice as large as another is more than twice as complex.So, the management of program development is different than the management of anything else.This is the definitive book on the subject.Is everything in the book absolutely correct in every situation?No, but it's very widely applicable, and better than any other reference available. ... Read More
Rating: - A classic
A must-read for software developers and their managers.I loved it 20 years ago in college and it has not lost any bite with age.