🖋️📖 Fred Brooks

cbrake · January 24, 2023, 4:06pm

No Siver Bullet: Essence and Accident in Software Engineering

A classic by Fred Brooks, originally written in 1986 (this copy may have been updated since then):

Brooks-NoSilverBullet-original.pdf (788.3 KB)

I have been researching the concept of “essential vs accidental complexity” and this is where I ended up. Apparently, these ideas go back to Aristotle:

Following Aristotle, I divide them into essence−the difficulties inherent in the nature of the software−and accidents−those difficulties that today attend its production but that are not inherent.

cbrake · February 11, 2026, 2:05pm

Successful software always gets changed. — Frederick P. Brooks

cbrake · February 13, 2026, 12:26pm

Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement. — Frederick P. Brooks

cbrake · February 24, 2026, 9:09pm

Over 70% of project time is spent thinking, and no tool can think for you — so even a perfect tool yields at most a 30% improvement. — Frederick P. Brooks

Even though we are amazed by AI’s capabilities, it is still a tremendous amount of work to build something actually useful to users.

cbrake · March 2, 2026, 9:25pm

What one programmer can do in one month, two programmers can do in two months. — Frederick P. Brooks