RIP -- Fred Brooks

Fred Brooks died on November 17, 2022. He was 91. This essay has nothing to do with rocks, but it's important to me and this is my web site

Fred Brooks is right up there on the right hand of God in my ledger book of computing. Although Fred was a philosopher, he was no mere observer. He was a warrior. Fred was the manager for the development of IBM’s System 360, hardware and software. That accomplishment allowed IBM to dominate the whole industry throughout the world for decades. Fred stands at the inflection point that marks the change from computers as an interesting idea to computers at the heart of civilization. I have both the original and the 20 year anniversary edition of his book, “The Mythical Man-Month”. It’s the only book about software development that I know of that was continuously in print over that entire period.

As the manager of a software project to develop a whole new production revenue system for an oil company, I traveled to Ireland to attend an IFIPS* conference because I learned that Fred Brooks would be there. I had to find out what he would say about my project. I tracked him down and managed to get a personal and private conversation with him.

It was more than discouraging. Fred lived up to his reputation of blunt honesty. He said he had seen a lot of projects like mine, and I didn’t have a ghost of a chance for success.

Fred was right … in a way. I did manage the project to completion, and it was put into production. But it was only a corporate fig leaf to avoid admitting failure. The system was rejected and replaced not long after that. For me personally, my goal of avoiding the shutdown of the entire company I worked for was successful. I only took on the project – after years of effort and millions of expenses had already been poured into it – because the future of the company depended on it. There is far more to that story, but this isn’t the place to tell the story and I’m the only one who cares now.

I can only compare Fred to historical figures like Galileo, Maxwell, and Newton. The world is a far different place because they were there. Fred is distinguished above these academic heroes. They discovered new truths. Fred was an engineer who discovered how to breathe life into truth.

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*IFIPS – International Federation of Information Processing Societies