Sublime

Like Vannevar Bush, who insisted, as described in chapter 1, that he “made no technical contribution whatever to the war effort,” Catmull saw his job as minding the system rather than managing the projects.

In well-run organizations, people can focus on their work (as opposed to politics and bureaucratic procedures) and have confidence that if they get their work done, good things will happen both for the company and for them personally. By contrast, in a poorly run organization, people spend much of their time fighting organizational boundaries and b

This book is a belated answer to Tom Watson's probing questions as to why programming is hard to manage.

Chapter 4. Aristocracy, Democracy, and System Design

The dilemma is a cruel one. For efficiency and conceptual integrity, one prefers a few good minds doing design and construction. Yet for large systems one wants a way to bring considerable manpower to bear, so that the product can make a timely appearance. How can these two needs be reconciled? Mills's Proposal A proposal by Harlan Mills offers a f

For some years I have been successfully using the following rule of thumb for scheduling a software task: 1/3 planning 1/6 coding 1/4 component test and early system test 1/4 system test, all components in hand.

The programmer at wit's end for lack of space can often do best by disentangling himself from his code, rearing back, and contemplating his data. Representation is the essence of programming.