Conversation
Notices
-
"The Tao of Programming"
www.mit.edu/~xela/tao.html
3.4
A manager went to the Master Programmer and showed him the requirements document for a new application. The manager asked the Master: "How long will it take to design this system if I assign five programmers to it?"
"It will take one year," said the Master promptly.
"But we need this system immediately or even sooner! How long will it take if I assign ten programmers to it?"
The Master Programmer frowned. "In that case, it will take two years."
"And what if I assign a hundred programmers to it?"
The Master Programmer shrugged. "Then the design will never be completed," he said.
-
Nicer formatting:
canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-pβ¦
-
The Tao of Programming is from 1987[0].
The above is a paraphrase of Brooks's Law in The Mythical Man-Month from 1975[1].
If these truths have been known for so long, why do we need to repeat them?
> The problems of managing people in teams have not changed, though the medium in which people are designing and the tools they are using have. Some people have called the book the "bible of software engineering." I would agree with that in one respect: that is, everybody quotes it, some people read it, and a few people go by it.[2]
[0] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tao_β¦
[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythβ¦
[2] money.cnn.com/magazines/fortunβ¦
-
The Codeless Code is the book/site I easily mix up with The Tao of Programming:
www.thecodelesscode.com/
#TheCodelessCode #TheTaoOfProgramming
-
They are different of course, one is a pastiche on Daoism (specifically the Tao Te Ching), the other on Zen Buddhism (specifically The Gateless Gate), but in my defense you can't say these two are unrelated; Some scholars see Zen at least partially as a merger between Buddhism and Daoism and through the filter of Western parody they become even more similar.