Received: by 10.68.226.41 with SMTP id rp9mr9021114pbc.4.1351443761556; Sun, 28 Oct 2012 10:02:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.68.223.98 with SMTP id qt2mr8573711pbc.20.1351443761541; Sun, 28 Oct 2012 10:02:41 -0700 (PDT) Path: csiph.com!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder3.hal-mli.net!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder1.hal-mli.net!nntp.club.cc.cmu.edu!newsfeed.news.ucla.edu!usenet.stanford.edu!kt20no15936803pbb.1!news-out.google.com!s9ni48504pbb.0!nntp.google.com!kt20no15936799pbb.1!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2012 10:02:41 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <1jzybo22hj28q$.12rjsy7z5zl4a.dlg@40tude.net> Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=173.164.137.214; posting-account=CP-lKQoAAAAGtB5diOuGlDQk0jIwmH0T NNTP-Posting-Host: 173.164.137.214 References: <469d50eb-cc9b-4878-8195-1faccd60cc07@googlegroups.com> <1jzybo22hj28q$.12rjsy7z5zl4a.dlg@40tude.net> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <61587d11-e729-4fb2-9e5e-28d9725c5280@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: Pardon me for asking, but... From: Lew Injection-Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2012 17:02:41 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.java.programmer:19550 Joerg Meier wrote: > David Lamb wrote: >> Do people still read Brooks' "Mythical Man-Month"? He said "adding >> people to a late project makes it later". So if you have a programming >> "emergency", maybe hiring somebody at the last minute isn't going to >> help. Nevertheless, people seem to do it. > > That truthism [sic] doesn't mean no project no matter how close or far from its > deadline can ever be sped up no matter the amount of programmers added. What exactly does that assertion contribute to the discussion? It is such an overwhelmingly bad idea to throw staff into the middle of a programming team in the middle of a project, with such consistently negative results when tried as has been objectively verified for decades, that Brooks is not the only one to offer the advice to avoid it, nor to substantiate that advice with evidence. To paraphrase Steve McConnell's /Rapid Development/, it's not that late addition of personnel to a project is the worst mistake one can make, but it's repeated so often with such predictable (harmful) results that it deserves to be labeled a "classic" mistake. You won't always lose betting against the casino, but don't back a plan based on beating the house. -- Lew