In The Mythical Man-Month the author, Frederick P. Brooks, Junior, begins his journey of software engineering by serving the reader an image of prehistoric creatures—programs—struggling for existence against a tar pit. The element is that programmers and their tools must be flawless in syntax and in reliability and every day a program is struggling to reach the necessities of today’s ideals.
He speaks of the skirmishes that surround the creation of a program such as putting forth time and effort only to discover that someone else has created a similar program, the likelihood of a program becoming obsolete like that of a dinosaur in a tar pit, and the program’s entrails and actions must be faultless. However, Brooks gives the reader an encouraging insight into programming by likening it to a child’s fancy. He states, “He [the programmer] builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the…show more content… As for invention, one must depend on strategic breakthroughs when it comes to a program. This occurs during representation of which Brooks deems as “the essence of programming.”
Paperwork or documentation is necessary if the job of a program is to be done correctly. It helps maintain a program so that the project itself does not focus on a redundant thought, cause a lack of communication, or cause programmers to wander around aimlessly throughout the project man-years. It also aids in deciding the forecast—success or failure—of the program (this is answered by “performance specifications and postulated prices” (109)).
When it comes to documents, Brooks states that writing the decisions down is essential. Decisions cause questions and gaps to form which can lead to a clearer and more exact policies. With documents comes a clearer task of which can be ran more efficiently due to everyone being on the same