Book Review: The Mythical Man-Month

Even though it was written 50 years ago, if you’re a software engineer and haven’t read this book yet, put it on top of your reading stack. The Mythical Man-Month is one of those timeless engineering classics every developer should read at least once in their career.

The Mythical Man-Month

In his book, Frederick P. Brooks analyzes how software engineering worked back in 1975 — with a strong focus on productivity and complexity. As an engineering manager, he was deeply concerned with one central question: Why is software development so difficult, and why do so many projects fail?

What’s fascinating is that — even though our industry has changed massively over the past 50 years — many of his observations are still true today.

Here are a few examples of his most striking claims:

I will contend that conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design. It is better to have a system omit certain anomalous features and improvements, but to reflect one set of design ideas, than to have one that contains many good but independent and uncoordinated ideas.

A small sharp team is best - as few minds as possible.

The second is the most dangerous system a person ever designs; the general tendency is to over-design it.

The manager of a project needs to establish a philosophy and set aside resources for the building of common tools, and at the same time to recognize the need for personalized tools.

And of course, the classic Brooks’s Law:

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.