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The classic example is the popular fallacy that you can speed up a software project by adding more developers. Frederick P.
Brooks debunked this theory in 1975, in his now-seminal book of essays, "The Mythical Man-Month."
Brooks' central premise was that adding more developers to a late software project won't make it go faster. On the contrary, they'll delay it further. If this is true, he argued, much of the other conventional wisdom about software project management was actually wrong.
Some of Brooks' examples seem obsolete today, but his premise is still sound. He makes his point cogently and convincingly. Unfortunately, too few developers seem to have taken it to heart. More than 35 years later, mythical thinking still abounds among programmers. We keep making the same mistakes.
The real shame is that, in many cases, our elders pointed out our errors years ago, if only we would pay attention. Here are just a few examples of modern-day programming myths, many of which are actually new takes on age-old fallacies. more...
Brooks' central premise was that adding more developers to a late software project won't make it go faster. On the contrary, they'll delay it further. If this is true, he argued, much of the other conventional wisdom about software project management was actually wrong.
Some of Brooks' examples seem obsolete today, but his premise is still sound. He makes his point cogently and convincingly. Unfortunately, too few developers seem to have taken it to heart. More than 35 years later, mythical thinking still abounds among programmers. We keep making the same mistakes.
The real shame is that, in many cases, our elders pointed out our errors years ago, if only we would pay attention. Here are just a few examples of modern-day programming myths, many of which are actually new takes on age-old fallacies. more...
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