Xref: utzoo comp.software-eng:2478 comp.misc:7441 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!think!ames!pacbell!att!watmath!mks.com!jim From: jim@mks.com (Jim Gardner) Newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.misc Subject: Re: Programmer productivity Keywords: Programmer Productivity Metrics Message-ID: <1989Nov21.144951.12540@mks.com> Date: 21 Nov 89 14:49:51 GMT References: <1989Nov20.170957.19588@world.std.com> Reply-To: jim@mks.com (Jim Gardner) Distribution: na Organization: Mortice Kern Systems, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada Lines: 24 In article <1989Nov20.170957.19588@world.std.com> madd@world.std.com (jim frost) writes: > >I got the following information from Brooks' _Mythical Man Month_, pp. >90-94. This table was originally from John Harr of Bell Telephone >Laboratories: I don't want to disparage Mr. Frost or the eminent Mr. Brooks, but The Mythical Man-Month is written about an entirely different age of computing (pre-1975). I recently read the book and was surprised at just how much has changed. For example, Mr. Brooks predicted that programmers would some day move from developing under batch to working extensively with time-sharing systems, and he thought this was a good idea. On the other hand, he deplored the fact that OS/360 wasted 26 whole bytes just to handle leap years correctly; he said that sort of thing could be better left up to the operator. Times have changed, programming techniques have changed, and our ideas of software quality have changed. Many of Brooks' insights remain valid, of course, but things like actual numbers have to be regarded as outdated. (It's possible that the numbers haven't changed, even though the programming environment is utterly different. However, we need more modern studies to see if that's true.) Jim Gardner, Mortice Kern Systems