RIP Fred 'Mythical Man Month' Brooks: IBM guru of software project management
(2022/11/28)
- Reference: 1669653010
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/11/28/fred_mythical_man_month_brooks/
- Source link:
Obit Dr Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr, leader of IBM's OS/360 project and the man chiefly responsible for the prevalence of the eight-bit byte, has died at the age of 91.
[1]Fred Brooks was the project lead for OS/360, IBM's flagship OS for its [2]vastly influential S/360 line of computers . His experience on this project led him to write probably the most famous book about project management, The Mythical Man-Month . From that book came several famous dictums about computing. Some notable examples include:
"Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."
"The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned."
"All programmers are optimists."
There are [3]quite a [4]few pages of Fred Brooks [5]quotations , with good reason – you will probably recognize several of them. For instance, he [6]originated (PDF) the use of the word "architecture" to describe computer design, as well as coining the phrase "second-system effect".
In 1999, he won the Turing award for "landmark contributions to computer architecture, operating systems, and software engineering."
In 2010, WIRED magazine [7]asked him what he felt was his greatest technological achievement. His response was:
The most important single decision I ever made was to change the IBM 360 series from a 6-bit byte to an 8-bit byte, thereby enabling the use of lowercase letters. That change propagated everywhere.
As the Reg has noted before, though, the software industry as a whole has [8]failed to learn what Brooks found and taught .
IBM hired Brooks to direct the OS/360 project because it was running late, although his previous project, the IBM 8000, had failed. Brooks attempted to resign, but this was rebuffed by IBM CEO Thomas J Watson Jr, who said:
I just spent a billion dollars educating you; I'm not letting you go now!
Under Brooks' direction, OS/360 did finally ship. It changed the direction of the computer industry, introducing the idea of software compatibility across different hardware models. The S/360 range were also the machines [9]on and for which the hypervisor was invented .
Brooks then quit IBM to found the [10]Faculty of Computer Science at the [11]University of North Carolina . After writing [12]The Mythical Man-Month (PDF), he went on to write and co-author multiple other books including [13]The Design of Design and papers including [14]No Silver Bullet — Essence and Accident in Software Engineering (PDF).
[15]NOTHING trumps extra pizza on IT projects. Not even more people
[16]Culture, schmulture. DevOps, agile need to be software-first again
[17]The Computer - An Illustrated History
[18]Déjà Vista
He has been [19]called "a giant of computer science", a sentiment [20]echoed by one of his students, Professor Steven Bellovin, the co-inventor of USENET and encrypted password exchange.
As his family's [21]obituary to him notes, he was a committed evangelical Christian. He suffered a stroke in 2020, after which his health declined. He leaves his wife of 66 years Nancy, three children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. ®
[22]
Get our [23]Tech Resources
[1] http://www.cs.unc.edu/~brooks/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2014/04/07/ibm_s_360_50_anniversary/
[3] https://www.azquotes.com/author/21223-Fred_Brooks
[4] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks
[5] https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3174788.Frederick_P_Brooks_Jr_
[6] https://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/~vojin/CLASSES/EEC272/S2005/Papers/IBM360-Amdahl_april64.pdf
[7] https://www.wired.com/2010/07/ff-fred-brooks/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2016/02/03/mythical_man_month/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2011/07/14/brief_history_of_virtualisation_part_2/
[10] https://cs.unc.edu/
[11] https://www.unc.edu/
[12] https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~weimerw/2018-481/readings/mythical-man-month.pdf
[13] https://www.i-programmer.info/bookreviews/4-methodology/1615-the-design-of-design-essays-from-a-computer-scientist-.html
[14] http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2016/02/03/mythical_man_month/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2017/10/13/devops_culture/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2006/02/27/frauenfelder_computer/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2006/04/06/os_vista_coding/
[19] https://www.i-programmer.info/news/82-heritage/15886-fred-brooks.html
[20] https://circleid.com/posts/20221119-in-memoriam-frederick-p-brooks-jr-a-personal-recollection
[21] https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/newsobserver/name/frederick-brooks-obituary?id=37962924
[22] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Y4TpJmOi4ULOgwxZS8vX8wAAAMk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[23] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
[1]Fred Brooks was the project lead for OS/360, IBM's flagship OS for its [2]vastly influential S/360 line of computers . His experience on this project led him to write probably the most famous book about project management, The Mythical Man-Month . From that book came several famous dictums about computing. Some notable examples include:
"Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."
"The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned."
"All programmers are optimists."
There are [3]quite a [4]few pages of Fred Brooks [5]quotations , with good reason – you will probably recognize several of them. For instance, he [6]originated (PDF) the use of the word "architecture" to describe computer design, as well as coining the phrase "second-system effect".
In 1999, he won the Turing award for "landmark contributions to computer architecture, operating systems, and software engineering."
In 2010, WIRED magazine [7]asked him what he felt was his greatest technological achievement. His response was:
The most important single decision I ever made was to change the IBM 360 series from a 6-bit byte to an 8-bit byte, thereby enabling the use of lowercase letters. That change propagated everywhere.
As the Reg has noted before, though, the software industry as a whole has [8]failed to learn what Brooks found and taught .
IBM hired Brooks to direct the OS/360 project because it was running late, although his previous project, the IBM 8000, had failed. Brooks attempted to resign, but this was rebuffed by IBM CEO Thomas J Watson Jr, who said:
I just spent a billion dollars educating you; I'm not letting you go now!
Under Brooks' direction, OS/360 did finally ship. It changed the direction of the computer industry, introducing the idea of software compatibility across different hardware models. The S/360 range were also the machines [9]on and for which the hypervisor was invented .
Brooks then quit IBM to found the [10]Faculty of Computer Science at the [11]University of North Carolina . After writing [12]The Mythical Man-Month (PDF), he went on to write and co-author multiple other books including [13]The Design of Design and papers including [14]No Silver Bullet — Essence and Accident in Software Engineering (PDF).
[15]NOTHING trumps extra pizza on IT projects. Not even more people
[16]Culture, schmulture. DevOps, agile need to be software-first again
[17]The Computer - An Illustrated History
[18]Déjà Vista
He has been [19]called "a giant of computer science", a sentiment [20]echoed by one of his students, Professor Steven Bellovin, the co-inventor of USENET and encrypted password exchange.
As his family's [21]obituary to him notes, he was a committed evangelical Christian. He suffered a stroke in 2020, after which his health declined. He leaves his wife of 66 years Nancy, three children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. ®
[22]
Get our [23]Tech Resources
[1] http://www.cs.unc.edu/~brooks/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2014/04/07/ibm_s_360_50_anniversary/
[3] https://www.azquotes.com/author/21223-Fred_Brooks
[4] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks
[5] https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3174788.Frederick_P_Brooks_Jr_
[6] https://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/~vojin/CLASSES/EEC272/S2005/Papers/IBM360-Amdahl_april64.pdf
[7] https://www.wired.com/2010/07/ff-fred-brooks/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2016/02/03/mythical_man_month/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2011/07/14/brief_history_of_virtualisation_part_2/
[10] https://cs.unc.edu/
[11] https://www.unc.edu/
[12] https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~weimerw/2018-481/readings/mythical-man-month.pdf
[13] https://www.i-programmer.info/bookreviews/4-methodology/1615-the-design-of-design-essays-from-a-computer-scientist-.html
[14] http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2016/02/03/mythical_man_month/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2017/10/13/devops_culture/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2006/02/27/frauenfelder_computer/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2006/04/06/os_vista_coding/
[19] https://www.i-programmer.info/news/82-heritage/15886-fred-brooks.html
[20] https://circleid.com/posts/20221119-in-memoriam-frederick-p-brooks-jr-a-personal-recollection
[21] https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/newsobserver/name/frederick-brooks-obituary?id=37962924
[22] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Y4TpJmOi4ULOgwxZS8vX8wAAAMk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[23] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
the eight-bit byte
captain veg
I was taught that "byte" is a (mangled) contraction of "by eight". But who am I to contradict a legend?
-A.
RIP
Always sad to hear of someone so notable in the furtherance of science or engineering passing away.
One last one for Dr. Brooks =>