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EVOLVING_BROOKS

                                             March 10, 2022
Early on (p.44) Brooks pushes the            June  06, 2022
need for conceptual integrity, which
he asserts requires a centralized
designer, a dictatorial authority.                     CROSSING_BROOKS

Later he argues for a shift from the                   Frederick P. Brooks,
architectural metaphor of "building"                   "The Mythical
to the biological one of "growing".                    Man-Month" (1975);
                                                       Expanded edition (1995)
This misses an obvious point:
biological evolution produces things
that work, but without any conceptual
integrity to speak of.

   It could be that neither metaphor
   works very well--

   It's likely these are two competing
   aspects in tension with each other--   "be true to yourself"
                                          "be open to change"

       Software projects need to steer
       between these needs: avoid           If you're insistent on
       gratuitous breakage with             conceptual inegrity on
       established expectations, but        the project level,
       modify the design as you learn       as your ideas change
       from past experience.                you're forced to
                                            implement new projects.

                                              Interestingly, many seem to
                    Hence the language        regard that as the right and
                    of the month club.        proper way of doing things.

                                              Also popular though, is the
                                              attempt at leveraging
                                              existing projects and
                                              increasing the range of
                                              what they can do without a
                                              hard break with the past.





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