Frederick P. Brooks Jr. Quotes & Sayings

Give a great deal of attention to keeping his managers and his technical people as interchangeable as their talents allow. The barriers are sociological ... To overcome this problem some laboratories, such as Bell Labs, abolish all job titles. Each professional employee is a member of technical staff. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

Adding manpower to a late software project, makes it later. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

As time passes, the system becomes less and less well-ordered. Sooner or later the fixing cease to gain any ground. Each forward step is matched by a backward one. Although in principle usable forever, the system has worn out as a base for progress ... A brand-new, from-the-ground-up redesign is necessary. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

All programmers are optimists — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

Years later, when I got to college, I learned about an important theory of psychology called Learned Helplessness, developed by Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman. This theory, backed up by years of research, is that a great deal of depression grows out of a feeling of helplessness: the feeling that you cannot control your environment. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

Testing is usually the most mis-scheduled part of programming. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

A basic principle of data processing teaches the folly of trying to maintain independent files in synchonism. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

Today I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to product quality. Having a system architect is the most important single step toward conceptual integrity. These principles are by no means limited to software systems, but to the design of any complex construct, whether a computer, an airplane, a Strategic Defense Initiative, a Global Positioning System. After teaching a software engineering laboratory more than 20 times, I came to insist that student teams as small as four people choose a manager and a separate architect. Defining distinct roles in such small teams may be a little extreme, but I have observed it to work well and to contribute to design success even for small teams. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

A baseball manager recognizes a nonphysical talent, hustle, as an essential gift of great players and great teams. It is the characteristic of running faster than necessary, moving sooner than necessary, trying harder than necessary. It is essential for great programming teams, too. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

Systems program building is an entropy-decreasing process, hence inherently metastable. Program maintenance is an entropy-increasing process, and even its most skillful execution only delays the subsidence of the system into unfixable obsolescence. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first one. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

The conclusion is simple: if a 200-man project has 25 managers who are the most competent and experienced programmers,
fire the 175 troops and put the managers back to programming. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.