OBIT Dr Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr, leader of IBM's OS/360 project and the man chiefly responsible for the prevalence of the eight-bit byte, has died at the age of 91.

Fred Brooks was the project lead for OS/360, IBM's flagship OS for its vastly influential S/360 line of computers. His experience on this project led him to write probably the most famous book about project management, The Mythical Man-Month. From that book came several famous dictums about computing. Some notable examples include:

- "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."
- "The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned."
- "All programmers are optimists."

RIP Fred 'Mythical Man-Month' Brooks: IBM guru of software project management
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/28/fred_mythical_man_month_brooks/

#fredbrooks #mythicalmanmonth #os360 #ibm

Not someone I'd actually heard of but a fascinating career.
https://nyti.ms/3Oy9Gzx

#Obituary #NewYorkTimes #NYT #RetroComputing #IBM #IBM360 #IBMSystem360 #System360 #OS360 #ComputerDesign