When I first started reading about Linux and Free Software, I kept coming across certain titles of classic programming texts, and one of the most cited is The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick P. Brooks. So I brought this home to read, since in my new position (this is week four) I am living on the periphery of a software programming project and I would like to know as much about the culture of programming as I can. The Mythical Man-Month was apparently the revolutionary programming book of the 1970s and laid out the standard for software development wisdom for a generation (and still seems to be the model). The most important assertion is Brooks' Law, which (against the conventional wisdom of the time) says that adding programmers to a late software project makes it later. I can see that this would be true, even from my slim experience with the developers at Equinox Software. The idea behind the theory is that you lose time (measured in "man-months") having to train and orient the programmers you add, and that this factor increases dramatically the more people you add.
As a new person to this group, they are having to train and orient me, which takes them away from their other duties. This group has been administering the GPLS system since PINES moved to the Evergreen ILS, and they need to have me trained up and in place before they can really concentrate on developing the software program itself. So here I am, adding man-months. I fancy myself to be worth the effort, but for the moment I certainly feel like a drag!
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