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by olau 2860 days ago
Clickbait. The post does not contrast Fred Brooks with Dijkstra.

(Instead it presents some complaints from Dijkstra - on overblown marketing material mostly. And presents some of Fred Brooks well-known points - apparently the author doesn't quite agree, or perhaps hadn't grasped the depth of Brooks' thinking.)

1 comments

(Author here)

The post quotes both Brooks and Dijkstra; the first managed development of a system and got famous, the second saw the system's actual failures and reported his criticism on it.

So, care to explain what exactly is it that you find lacking? My experience with people who cite "failure to grasp the thinking" has been rather with "architecty" types that can't get past handwaving to make a point, so anything concrete would be appreciated.

For example: you say Dijkstra complains "on overblown marketing material mostly". Citation, please? Sounds like you mean that the marketing overpromised and underdelivered, but to me it looks like Dijkstra was pretty clear about the whole set of ideas being poppycock even if fully delivered; he says that it's fundamentally the wrong way to do things, and does so in a rather smug "told you so" mode.

... unless we want to argue that maybe Dijkstra didn't "grasp the depth of Brooks' thinking" either, nor the functionality of that thinking's actual, first hand implementation?