How much of the Mythical Man Month still applies? [closed]

Answer 1

The idea isn't that "large teams don't work", it's that "throwing people/money at the problem isn't the answer". Things like unit testing, separation of concerns, etc. are doing other things rather than just throwing people at the problem. These other things allow you to carefully add more people in the right place to speed things up. If anything, the points you make support the ideas of the book.

Answer 2

The Mythical Man Month is a very dated read, but the core truths still apply. Sure Brooks discusses the need for a secretary which is clearly not true today and his concept of a surgical team doesn't work well, but most of the book is still accurate. His insight that communication requirements increase along with the size of the team is still true. His observation that adding people to a late project makes it later has been born out by a lot of projects. Unit tests help a little, but they don't stop one from misunderstanding the code or asking a lot of questions. No Silver Bullet also continues to stand the test of time.

Answer 3

I certainly think things like "No Silver Bullet" are just as applicable today as they were decades ago, especially as we see more and more young people come into industry and think x is the latest and greatest killer language/technology and all the other technologies will die because of it.

Granted, the references to Ada or sharing computers are antiquated, but the concept of accidental and essential difficulties, buy vs. build, how code is complex by definition because we don't repeat parts, and all the other theoretical topics are still completely accurate and relevant.

The other argument for why TMMM is relevant is that, it's not really about software itself but about how programmers get things done. In this way, it's hard for it to become obsolete.