The mythical man-month. By Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company Reading, Massachusetts 1975, $6.50, 195 pages

There are at most a half-dozen books in computing that should be read by everyone involved with programming. Dijkstra's essay in Structured P r o g r d n g [ll, and Weinberg's The PsychoZogz of Computer PrOg&ng are two obvious examples; Frederick P. Brooks's The NthicaZ Man-Month is a third. Fred Brooks was project manager for the development of the IBM System/360 computer, and manager of 0s 360 software development. 0s 360 is probably the most widely used, influential, and criticized operating system ever built. is a look back over that experience, and an attempt to record the lessons, positive and negative, for the benefit of future developers of software systems. Although the treatment is oriented toward the problems of large software projects, there is a lot here for any programmer who takes pride in his craft.