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| Surprisingly, technology has changed a bit. This is the computer that this book is focused on. |
Summary
Now we're reading "Why did the tower of Babel fall", "Calling the Shot", and "Ten Pounds in a Five Pound Sack".
Babel is about communication on a large project. Inadequate communication seems to be the root cause for most failures. A few methods are discussed to resolve it. The first is to use a project workbook, basically a massive fully encompassing specification of the entire system, including everything. The second looks at how team organization is handled, with the concept of having a producer (someone responsible for getting people on the same page), and a director (someone responsible for direction). Again with the 1000 years out of date.
Calling the Shot seems like it's about estimating, and comparing estimations to actual performance. It then goes off and says "hey, using a higher level programming language may lead to upto 5x productivity". Srsly? Higher level languages might lead to more productivity then lower level ones? Mein Got!
Ten Pounds looks largely at memory constraints. It states that when building a system, it's important to have both 'operating' and 'actual' limits for size. It's also important to keep a handbook of algorithms with their tradeoffs listed, to keep from suboptimally re-inventing the round rolly thingy.
Discussion:
1. Why is this paper interesting or significant?
It instructs me on how to deal with issues with solutions that are timely and relevant!
2. What are the faults of this work?
Statement 1 was sarcasm. Really. Some of the issues that are being discussed are still relevant (that estimating is always wrong, for instance), but 90% of the discussion is time period specific, and lost on those of us that did not grow up renting out memory on a mainframe.
3. What is the possible future work extending from this work?
The future work happened yesterday.
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