Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!decwrl!nsc!voder!blia!nobody
From: nobody@blia.sharebase.com (Nobody at all)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Second System Effect
Message-ID: <13552@blia.sharebase.com>
Date: 22 Feb 91 18:45:05 GMT
References: <30512@mimsy.umd.edu>
Reply-To: jeffb@blackhaw.UUCP (Jeff Beard)
Organization: ShareBase
Lines: 48

> From: dalamb@umiacs.umd.edu (David Lamb)
> 
> In "The Mythical Man-Month", Fred Brooks (1975) described the "second system
> effect": on one's second try at a particular kind of system, one tends
> to add all kinds of bells, whistles, kazoos, etc., vastly
> overcomplicating the software.  When I first read it, this seemed like
> it had to be true, but I haven't seen anyone else discussing it.  Does
> anyone else have any published references discussing such an effect?
> Do y'all believe it's still a problem these days?
> 
> --

This strikes me as asking if anyone has publish their latest failings.
I believe quite strongly that there are problems of this kind, but the
magnitude is not likely to be discussed openly.  


The work you cite is most interesting and ought to be a required reading
of all CS students.  Moreover, required reading by all development managers.
The major software/hardware vendor in the U.S. took the time to have a 
conference in which the sole topic was "The Mythical Man-Month".  
Upon returning to work the next day, it was as if we never attended ... 
the same mistakes continued to be made over, and over, and ....

I can't relate the number of times that manpower has been dumped upon 
a project due to scheduling problems.  Yet Brooks properly identified

   "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later".[pg 25]

We read, 'understand', and then so often go on as if we never heard of
the subject under discussion (in the general sense).  I've said before
that the difference between wisdom and knowledge is the ability to USE
what one has learned.  By not being able to respond to scheduling 
issues in productive and reasonable ways, software managers often
demonstrate lack of wisdom.

"Pessimistic" you say?  

   "The difference between a pessimist and an optimist is 24 years experience"

Mr Brooks has contributed more understanding of the process of developing
software than then industry is capable of assimilating ... 
even some 16 years later.


----

J.O.Beard 	jeffb@sharebase.com


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