Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
toll that OS/360 took on IBM's software personnel was perhaps even
more signifi cant.
The highly publicized failure of the OS/360 project served as a dra-
matic illustration of the shortcomings of the traditional management
methods in software development. It was in
The Mythical Man-Month
,
his postmortem analysis of the OS/360 disaster, that Brooks fi rst com-
pared programming to poetry. His larger point was that computer pro-
gramming, as an inherently artistic activity, was resistant to most forms
of industrial production. Take, for example, his own experience with
OS/360: when faced with serious schedule slippages, quality problems,
and unanticipated changes in scope, he and the other project leaders had
done what traditional manufacturing managers were accustomed to
doing, which was to add more resources. The only noticeable result was
that the project fell more and more behind schedule.
After diagnosing the disease, Brooks proposed its cure. If skilled
programmers were the sine qua non of quality software development,
they must be elevated to the center of the production process. The
remainder of
The Mythical Man-Month
is an attempt to fi gure out
how to harness the power of highly artistic programmer/poets to the
demands of industrial-strength software development. The development
methodology that Brooks outlined was never widely adopted in industry,
but his larger argument about the inherently creative nature of program-
ming was.
The Mythical Man-Month
quickly became one of the most
widely read and oft-quoted references on the practice of software
development.
There is no doubt that in the formative years of commercial computing,
there was widespread dissension within the programming community
over the goals and direction of the programming profession. Computer
scientists, corporate employers, and vocational programmers disagreed
about the proper relationship between formal and idiosyncratic tech-
nique, local knowledge and generally applicable theory. What was largely
agreed on, however, was that in the early 1960s, programming was “not
yet a science, but an art that lacks standards, defi nitions, agreement on
theories and approaches.”
40
This popular perception of computer pro-
gramming as a poorly understood, idiosyncratic, and creative process
defi ned the discipline as it emerged in the 1950s, and continues to infl u-
ence the culture and practice of programming even today. The notion
that programming was an art served as both a resource and a source of
much anxiety and discomfort for programmers.
