[it_citizen]

Agree, but sometimes looking for recent books with the same underlying message is better than going through the classic.

I read the mythical man month recently and the examples often involving OS/360 development are brutally outdated. I couldn't relate and I had to force myself to finish.

[warrenm]

I find it surprising that you thought Mythical Man Month was "brutally outdated"

Bentley's Programming Pearls, by that standard, is also "brutally outdated" - but the point of the book is not "how do I make this work in early 1980s technology"

The point of PP is "ask the right question"

The point of MMM is "add resources when necessary; be brutally minimalistic about how many resources are added"

[it_citizen]

I said the examples are brutally outdated, not the message. The book is filled with acronyms and names I didn’t know because they are 60 years old.

I’d rather read a 2023 version if I could.

[warrenm]

The acronyms and names are basically irrelevant to the point, though :)

If anything, having "outdated" acronyms and names may actually make the message stronger - because you don't need to be distracted by what they "are", you can just accept they exist[ed] :)

[it_citizen]

I get that it is a classic but arguing that understanding less words and examples in a book makes the message stronger is a tough sell.

[_0xik]

The Mythical Man Month is also super anti-feminist, which I wish people talked about more if they're going to recommend that book.

[marginalia_nu]

The book's nearly 50 years old. Most books not written very recently are not going to adhere to contemporary values and mores. If you're not willing to offer generosity when reading them and pick the useful part and discard the parts that haven't aged well, then you're going to miss out on a lot of very worthwhile reading.

[_0xik]

That's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is: Why do we not *update* these books? This gets back into the question of copyright of course.

[gadders]

Sensitivity Readers haven't been universally popular.

[edit] With Economist link: https://www.economist.com/britain/2023/03/23/editing-roald-d...

[Arisaka1]

Because the human brain has the capacity to frame specific pieces of work in their time periods, understand the discrepancies between past and present and work around it.

I would also like to offer an additional counterpoint: Leaving work intact will, not only preserve the work "as is", but also contribute to future historians the true sociological impression that is aptly accurate for their time period.

[marginalia_nu]

Because then we lose any sense of historical context.

Old books at their essence lets us talk to people from the past. We won't always like what they have to say, but they will speak about themselves and highlight how we've changed. If we can't understand where we came from, then we can't hope to understand how we got where we are.

[_0xik]

What? Tons of books get new editions. It happens constantly. For example, Strunk & White [0] has been updated in 1918, 1959, 1999, and 2009. Authors release different versions of their own books. I just wrote a review of a book [1] that had a 2nd edition released in 2022 after the first edition was released in 2014. J.R.R. Tolkein retconned The Hobbit after publication of Lord of the Rings. [2] (I realize this isn't really the same thing but I wanted to give an example in fiction)

Anyway, point is, tons of books are changed after publication. I don't see why The Mythical Man Month shouldn't be; the technology is out of date and the gender issues are out of date.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Writes-Improved-Go-Ridiculo...

[2] https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2012/12/13/how-jrr-tolkien-pull...

[marginalia_nu]

Technical revisions, sure. At the same time books re-published to align with the political zeitgeist rarely tend to age particularly well.

[racktash]

It's been about ten years since I read it, but I don't remember anything particularly "anti-feminist" in it. Or anything political at all. I'm curious why you think so.

[blowski]

I think "anti-feminist" implies it expressses some opinion about the feminist movement, which it doesn't, to my recollection.

That said, it is somewhat sexist in its assumption that all programmers are men, which is not a surprise given when it was published. That lack of gender inclusivity is right there in the title. But it doesn't really take away from the value of the writing unless you're trying to be offended.

[pipes]

I haven't read it, but what does it say about feminism?

[hermitcrab]

I don't remember that. But I read it a long time ago. Can you supply a quote to back this up?

[_0xik]

I don't have my copy with me so I can't supply an exact quote right now. The part that really stuck out was about companies relocating though. First, there was absolutely no possibility that women would be working, and iirc the primary reason that a company might not want to relocate was that a wife might complain her husband had to move, thus inconveniencing his boss. Something like this.

[hermitcrab]

I found this: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1461289590

"A team of two, with one leader , is often the best use of minds. [Note God's plan for marriage.]'"

That is only sexist if he is saying that the man is naturally the leader. Did he say that?

[actionfromafar]

At the time, it must have been the straight reading, right?

[hermitcrab]

That is quite an assumption. But I don't know the full context of the quote.

[239847823971]

The author is only forwarding what the Bible says. So your beef is not with the author, but actually with all religions.

[drewcoo]

The book is at least a decade or two out of political fashion.

For thousands of years, certainly in European culture, the default human entity, when not specified, was masculine in gender. By which I mean grammatical gender, not the current politically vogue meaning of "gender."

We don't need to disregard thousands of years of knowledge because the authors were unaware of what would be PC in their future. That would be puerile. ("Childish," from the Latin word for "boy.")

[eesmith]

> "Childish," from the Latin word for "boy."

I think you mean "puerile", not "childish."

"Child" comes from Proto-Germanic. https://www.etymonline.com/word/child says "no certain cognates outside Germanic".

The Latin word for boy is "puer": "a boy, lad (typically between ages 7-14 but could be younger) (older than an infans but younger than an adulescens)" - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/puer#Noun_4 .

Puerile comes "from Latin puerilis "boyish; childish,"'- https://www.etymonline.com/word/puerile .

Grammatic gender doesn't always match natural gender even in the European languages. "Wīfman" means "woman" in Old English but is grammatically masculine. The Old English "mann" meant generally "person". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mann#Old_English making "wīfmann" a female person and "wæpnedmann" a male person, though "wer" was the usual word for "adult male" (remaining in "weregild" and "werewolf").

In modern Swedish there is no masculine gender, and "man" can mean either "an adult male" or "a person". Consider "Hysterektomi ... kan också göras om man har cellförändringar eller cancer i livmodern." which in English is "A hysterectomy can also be done if one has cell changes or cancer in the uterus." (from https://www.1177.se/behandling--hjalpmedel/operationer/opera... ).

The Swedish "man" in that sentence translates directly as "one" in English, not "adult male", though usually in English we would write "you" as a sort of third-person pronoun, over the more formal "one" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You#Third_person_usage , even when we don't know if the reader has a uterus.

[pydry]

It is not.

[raincole]

lmao