Fred Brooks stated this very same statement back in his 1975 book "The Mythical Man-Month"
Assigning more programmers to a project running behind schedule will make it even later, due to the time required for the new programmers to learn about the project, as well as the increased communication overhead. When N people have to communicate among themselves (without a hierarchy), as N increases, their output M decreases and can even become negative (i.e. the total work remaining at the end of a day is greater than the total work that had been remaining at the beginning of that day, such as when many bugs are created).
One of my favorite quotes fits this discussion quote well. The quote is from Robert A Heinlein's 1939 story "Life Line"
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest.
This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
You are mistaken, There are still billion of lines of COBOL code running in the major corporations. I don't see much of it being rewritten anytime soon.
Mark Jacobs
"In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant."
"Then they came for me --- and by that time no one was left to speak up."
The company I work for hired a person right out of college. Spent about $2500 on him by geting him an IBM Education card which gave him one year of IBM education. This person has grown to fill a very important postion in our technical services department. He started working with CICS and is now performing a zOS operating system upgrade.
I am a Mainframe systems programmer and some of my responsibilities is to apply software patches to the operating system. Several hundred flaws are announced, fully described and patched each month.
The only exception is for what IBM calls integrity apars. IBM has a formal statement of system integrity and any problems that violate these rules are only described as an integrity apar.
MVS System Integrity Definition
System Integrity is defined for MVS as the inability of any program not authorized by a mechanism under the customer's control to:
1. circumvent or disable store or fetch protection
2. access an OS password-protected or a RACF-protected
resource (RACF is the Resource Access Control Facility),
or
3. obtain control in an authorized state; that is, in
supervisor state, with a protection key less than eight
(8), or Authorized Program Facility (APF) authorized.
Mark Jacobs Consulting Systems Specialist Time Customer Service Tampa Florida
I happen to like the idea of "Pay as you drive" auto insurance but would tie it to a surcharge on auto fuel (gas or diesel). Every drivers license would have an insurance rating encoded on it. Every gasoline pump would be required to read this insurance rating prior to the sale of gasoline. Depending on the drivers rating the surcharge would go up (for bad or new drivers) or be low for safe drivers.
This has several benefits;
1) The more you drive, the more you pay.
2) Bad drivers pay more.
3) No more uninsured drivers.
4) The power of insurance companies would decrease.
Slashdot Mirror
Fred Brooks stated this very same statement back in his 1975 book "The Mythical Man-Month"
Assigning more programmers to a project running behind schedule will make it even later, due to the time required for the new programmers to learn about the project, as well as the increased communication overhead. When N people have to communicate among themselves (without a hierarchy), as N increases, their output M decreases and can even become negative (i.e. the total work remaining at the end of a day is greater than the total work that had been remaining at the beginning of that day, such as when many bugs are created).
Maybe Mike will finally come to earth. He will find us as messed up as described in the book.
He really meant "My customers are too stupid to run this crappy operating system in an environment that we don't fully control"
One of my favorite quotes fits this discussion quote well. The quote is from Robert A Heinlein's 1939 story "Life Line"
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest.
This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
You are mistaken, There are still billion of lines of COBOL code running in the major corporations. I don't see much of it being rewritten anytime soon. Mark Jacobs
Here is the actual quote;
"In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because
I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't
speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant."
"Then they came for me --- and by that time no one was left to speak up."
German Pastor Martin Niemoller
They could use the exercise.
Mark Jacobs
The company I work for hired a person right out of college. Spent about $2500 on him by geting him an IBM Education card which gave him one year of IBM education. This person has grown to fill a very important postion in our technical services department. He started working with CICS and is now performing a zOS operating system upgrade.
I wish we could have more like him.
Mark Jacobs
Time Customer Service
Tampa, FL
I am a Mainframe systems programmer and some of my responsibilities is to apply software patches to the operating system. Several hundred flaws are announced, fully described and patched each month.
The only exception is for what IBM calls integrity apars. IBM has a formal statement of system integrity and any problems that violate these rules are only described as an integrity apar.
MVS System Integrity Definition
System Integrity is defined for MVS as the inability of any program not authorized by a mechanism under the customer's control to:
1. circumvent or disable store or fetch protection
2. access an OS password-protected or a RACF-protected
resource (RACF is the Resource Access Control Facility),
or
3. obtain control in an authorized state; that is, in
supervisor state, with a protection key less than eight
(8), or Authorized Program Facility (APF) authorized.
Mark Jacobs
Consulting Systems Specialist
Time Customer Service
Tampa Florida
I happen to like the idea of "Pay as you drive" auto insurance but would tie it to a surcharge on auto fuel (gas or diesel). Every drivers license would have an insurance rating encoded on it. Every gasoline pump would be required to read this insurance rating prior to the sale of gasoline. Depending on the drivers rating the surcharge would go up (for bad or new drivers) or be low for safe drivers. This has several benefits; 1) The more you drive, the more you pay. 2) Bad drivers pay more. 3) No more uninsured drivers. 4) The power of insurance companies would decrease.