Re: [tlug] OT: A Good Read

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Nguyen Vu Hung writes:

 > The COCOMO 1 and 2 - which is invented 30+ years ago is not true anymore.

It never was true, and it still is true.  It depends on how accurate
you want "true" to be, and to what you apply it.  Cowboy hackers and
one-off scripts never were predictable by COCOMO, but large teams
(>= 20) of programmers are statistically predictable, as are large
software systems with quality standards for incorporating code.

 > The complexity has changed.

I don't see that.  Each programmer still writes about the same
complexity of code in unit time, although in many cases the support
libraries and runtime systems encapsulate huge amounts of previously
"solved" (more or less :-) problems.  True, the systems get larger,
but the amount a single programmer can handle is the same.

"Man is the measure of all things" never was truer than in software
development.  Cf. *The Mythical Man-Month*.