The Mythical Man-Month 50 years on

Following on from my review on GoodReads, I thought I'd write an article about The Mythical Man-Month, considering it's 2025 - 50 years on, from the original 1975 publication of Fred Brooks' book.

The blurb on the back sums this up well, with the word "timeless". Yes, there are aspects of this book that show its age - large IBM Mainframes, requiring scheduling for Software Engineers to run and debug their code on it. But the concepts are largely still applicable, even in 2025 - 50 years on, from the first publication. I've taken a lot away from this and I suspect you will too.

Timeless is very appropriate for this book. Fred Brooks wrote multiple essays on Software Engineering and the craftmanship involved, stating many principles and making several predictions - that are mostly still applicable today.

The Mythical Man-Month's core principle is that when you have a given project, throwing more man-power at it (and thus, man-months), doesn't actually reduce the development time - but rather impacts it.

It was about 3 nights ago, that I read the Chapter No Silver Bullet, within which Fred states:

Artificial intelligence. Many people expect advances in artificial intelligence to provide the revolutionary breakthrough that will give order-of-magnitude gains in software productivity and quality. I do not.

His statement I do not is brutal and I believe true. He goes on to state:

The hard thing about building software is deciding what to say, not saying it.

After 20+ years as a Software Engineer (in varying job titles), I have found that writing the code to solve the problem is the easy part. For most things, you can apply principles you've already learnt - CRUD operations, sorting, searching, input/output etc. for the others, you can call upon others who have solved it, using Google or Stack Overflow. The difficultly and the part that requires the most of a knowledge worker's brain power, is determining how to solve the problem in the first place. As you become more experienced, it's about how to solve it efficiently, securely and within the scope of your team's capabilities.

Fred states two distinct definitions of AI and elaborates on his second:

Expert systems. An expert system is a program containing generalized inference engine and a rule base, designe to take input data and assumptions and explore the logical consequences through the inferences derivable from the rule base, yielding conclusions and advice, and offering to explain its results by retracing its reasoning for the user.

Fred has defined machine learning, large language models and the essence of most AI systems available to us today.

Fred then discusses automatic programming:

"Automatic" programming. ... the generation of a program for solving a problem from a statement of the problem specifications.

This hints at Vibe Coding - the practice of using AI to generate code, without even reviewing it - just stating what you want to solve and having the AI create it for you.

Artifical Intelligence isn't a new concept, as Fred's The Mythical Man-Month's 50 year age shows. But, recent developments - now that we're in the AI era - have made his predictions a reality.

As with all other tools, concepts, principles and technologies - AI is an evolution on what has gone before. Software Engineers are learning to use it within their array of tools, to complement their development process. It's not revolutionary, as it isn't giving orders-of-magnitude gains in productivity. However, I also believe it's not a hype - and it will continue to grow and evolve and provide use. A developer can call upon his coding assistant, to rubber-duck something, peer-review a piece of code or even suggest alternatives. Mundane tasks can also be fulfilled by an AI backed coding assistant. The possibilities will continue to expand as we incorporate AI into the software development process.

In the 1995 edition, Fred does include a few additional chapters - which reflect on his No Silver Bullet essay and the predictions scattered throughout his book. They were mostly accurate and continue to still be today. In the chapter The Mythical Man-Month after 20 years he states:

One of the most impressive developments in software during the past two decades has been the triumph of the Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointing interface - or WIMP for short.

He explains a brief history and how it has then been complemented by context menus and shortcut keys for power users.

Fred then states:

Despite its excellences, I expect the WIMP interface to be a historic relic in a generation.

In 2025, more than a generation after this statement, WIMP is still the dominant and universal interface for the majority of technologies. Other devices have come along, with their own interface - for example, SmartPhones, with touch interfaces; Voice Assistants with voice input; Car systems (Apple CarPlay/Android Auto) with both touch and voice interfaces. But, WIMP is still at the core, with these additional inputs complementing, rather than replacing it.

I was recommended the book (by my CTO) during the interview process - and highly recommend it to fellow Software Engineers of 2025 and beyond.