Saturday, July 31, 2010

The Designer Of The Design Of Design

Wired has a far-too-brief interview with Fred Brooks, the legendary programmer, software architect and author of The Mythical Man-Month (required reading for anyone in the software business, if you ask me). Brooks, who will soon turn 80, has a new book entitled The Design of Design. I haven't read it yet, but it sounds like something I should add to my list.

As an Agile enthusiast, I enjoyed this point from the interview:

"When I first wrote The Mythical Man-Month in 1975, I counseled programmers to “throw the first version away,” then build a second one. By the 20th-anniversary edition, I realized that constant incremental iteration is a far sounder approach. You build a quick prototype and get it in front of users to see what they do with it. You will always be surprised."

On the other hand, my love of team collaboration took a mild hit when Brooks said:

"For instance, I once argued that every member of a team should be able to see the code of every other member, but it turns out that encapsulation works much better."

If anyone out there has already read The Design of Design, comments on it are welcome here.

No comments: