Justplain

I’ve started reading The mythical man-month, a book on software project management written by Frederick P. Brooks jr. in 1975. I have a copy of the 20th aniversary edition (1995) which has some extra’s. It is considered a must read for software engineers and is still relevant because the focus of the book is not on the technology but on people working with technology.

If only read the first essay, the tar pit, so far. Brooks makes a great analyses why programming is fun:

1. The sheer joy of making things, children (lego) and adults (programs) like creating things.
2. The pleasure of making things that are useful to other people
3. The fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects of interlocking moving parts and watching them work in subtle cycles, playing out the consequences of principles built in from the beginning.
4. The joy of always learning, which springs from the nonrepeating nature of the task.
5. The delight of working in such a tractable medium. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff.

So, thats why we are such a happy bunch Brooks also describes a few woes, but i won’t spoil the mood right now. If you haven’t got a clue what i’m talking about, you should watch the interview Robert Scoble did with Dori Smith, a javascript programmer and writer of several books, and of course a blogger, on this subject. She’s the proof for Brooks analyses!