Customer Reviews
One seminal essay. The rest, repetitive and out of date. - By: Highlander, 29 Jan 2008 
For sure the Mythical Man Month was a seminal essay back then. This is worth reading for sure. But the rest of the book is very out of date, & very repetitive. It gets a bit wearing too hearing the old line that hardware has advanced a thousand fold & software hasn't. Er, played any computer games lately?
I'd recommend reading the Mythical Man Month elsewhere if you can find it online & save the time, money, & effort reading the whole book.
Time better spent reading a book on Agile, or XP I would think.
A bit outdated... - By: S. Knight, 01 Aug 2007 
Bought this book on the recommendation of a friend, bought "Debugging the Development Environment" on the recommendation of my boss & would probably recommend neither for todays fluidic environments. Mythical Man Month contains a somewhat outdated view of software development, more suitably apt for an age when only long time development projects for mainframes existed & Web/PC development had not been heard of.
Still relevant in parts to large waterfalll based development projects, not helpful with RAD/Extreme & other more modern, smalll team development methods & probably only a useful read if you are new to project teams and/or have not worked in an IT environment
Orinal text is brilliant - By: Kerola Sami, 03 Apr 2007 
The 1975 text is genius like essay No Silver Bullets at the end part of the book. At the very final essay is completely different.
At the final pages (207 & onwards) for some reason Mr Brooks felt that he needs to start defending his original text against critics. Fighting with critics is pointless & makes one me only to feel a shamed behalf of Mr Brooks.
The "absolute must read" in software engineering - By: Luis Sergio Oliveira, 29 Aug 2006 
I was working for several years in software development, exposed to systems engineering context before reading this book. I think Brooks was so right so long ago that this is "the absolute must read book" on software engineering for anyone interested.
Brooks writes in each chapter about different concerns that affect Software Engineering. The chapters include experiences the author had during his work in IBM back in the 70s. This makes it even more interesting since you actuallly learn about history of the craft. Note that the main content was written a while ago, but, much of it still applies in today's environment.
This edition includes the original essays & adds new content that comment on the book, the evolution of the field & what the author thinks is still applicable & what not.
As a whole it is very readable & many times fun to read. IMO this is a must read for anyone working in software engineering.
A genuine classic - a truly seminal work - By: J. E. Davidson, 17 Dec 2004 One of the best books ever written about software development & computing in general.
Yes, it has dated in places but even so it is still very interesting & often incredibly insightful. The title essay (about how throwing additional people at an already late project simply makes it even later) & the essay about Second System Syndrome at particularly good.
It ought to be (but rather sadly is not) a must read for everybody working in IT.
