Response to Mythical Man-Month Ch 2-6
Marc Siegel (mlsiegel)


What struck me most strongly in this text is the author's vision of
how implementers and architects should interact. He proposes the use
of architects as a separate, higher class of designer -- the
'aristocracy' of the design process. However, he highlights in other
places the necessary autonomy of the implementer, and the fact that
in practice it is the specification rather than the implementation
which usually gets changed if they disagree in practice.

It's hard not to smilingly agree with the author's descriptions
of the difficulties inherant in having too many architects. It also
appeals to me to think of 'form as liberating', as I have indeed 
noticed this in music and other creative forms, including sports and
group activities. Knowing you are running through a forest frees your
mind to concentrate on not hitting the trees, sure. 

However, in my experience (which is not very encompassing I admit) I
have found that unless the architects have already implemented and
also heavily used such a system as they are developing, large portions
of their vision and proscription will end up being proved useless or
inapt when implementation occurs. This is less a problem the more
their vision approaches 'though-experiment' level, where they have 
essentially both implemented and used the designed product in their
minds. But in practice, there will be lessons learned in the making of
a real thing that were not foreseen in the imagination stage, and
the author allows only the slightest feedback path to the designers.
This puts an awful burden on designing things that fit the experiences
of the architects' imaginations and seems like an obstruction to 
learning during implementation.

Other ideas I liked were architectural 'direct incorporation' by
#include files, and the fact that if all implementers keep logs
of their questions and answers in discussions with each other and
the architects, they can be compiled easily into a well-organized
FAQ, even including "why do we do it this way, what about alternative
X or Y questions". That would save so much time it is amazing.