A critic of Guido's blog on Python's lambda

[Bill Atkins]

brian at sweetapp.com writes:

> Bill Atkins wrote:
>> Buh?  The project doesn't have to be late for Brooks's law to hold;
>> adding programmers, so goes Brooks reasoning, will always increase the
>> time required to complete the project because of various communication
>> issues.
>
> 1. This is not what Brooks says. Brooks was talking about late
>    projects. Please provide a supporting quote if you wish to continue
>    to claim that "adding programmers will always increase the time
>    required to complete the project".

The "always" in my claim should not be there, I admit.  Brooks didn't
claim that.

I refer you to pages 17 - 18 of The Mythical Man-Month:

  Since software construction is inherently a systems effort - an
  exercise in complex interrelationships - communication effort is
  great...Adding more men then lengthens, not shortens, the schedule.

It is totally absurd to assume that, simply because a project has not
yet passed its deadline, it will somehow become immune to the kinds of
things Brooks is talking about.  His thesis is that adding programmers
to an already-in-progress project will cause a delay, because the new
programmers must be brought up to speed.  It does not matter if the
project is eight weeks late or has only been active for a month.  This
issue still remains:

  The two new men, however competent and however quickly trained, will
  require training in the task by one of the experienced men.  If this
  takes a month, 3 man-months will have been devoted to work not in
  the original estimate. (p. 24, TMM-M)

Brooks's Law mentions only late projects, but the rest of his
discussion applies to adding programmers in the middle of *any*
project.

Is this really so radical an idea?

> 2. There has to be a mechanism where an organization can add
>    developers - even if it is only for new projects. Python advocates

Obviously.

>    would say that getting developers up to speed on Python is easy
>    because:
>
>     - it fits most programmers brains i.e. it is similar enough to
>       languages that most programmers have experience with and the
>       differences are usually perceived to beneficial (exception:
>       people from a Java/C/C++ background often perceive dynamic
>       typing as a misfeature and have to struggle with it)
>     - the language is small and simple
>     - "magic" is somewhat frowned upon in the Python community i.e.
>       most code can be taken at face value without needing to learn a
>       framework, mini-language, etc. (but I think that the Python
>       community could do better on this point)

These are not things I look for in a programming language.

>
>    I'm sure that smarter people can think of more points.
>
>> Fair enough. But what does Python offer above any garbage-collected
>> language that makes it so scalable?
>
> See above point - you can more easily bring programmers online in your
> organization because most programmers find Python easily learnable.
> And, as a bonus, it is actually a pretty flexible, powerful language.
>  
> Cheers,
> Brian
>

-- 
This is a song that took me ten years to live and two years to write.
 - Bob Dylan