{"id":37658,"date":"2022-11-18T21:02:34","date_gmt":"2022-11-19T02:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=37658"},"modified":"2022-12-01T15:33:30","modified_gmt":"2022-12-01T20:33:30","slug":"fred-brooks-rip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/18\/fred-brooks-rip\/","title":{"rendered":"Fred Brooks, RIP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dag_spicer\/status\/1593627460456718336\">Dag Spicer<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=33649390\">Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dag_spicer\/status\/1593627460456718336\">\n<p>Legendary computer architect Fred Brooks passed away today. Brooks led the team creating the timeless IBM System\/360 mainframe architecture as well as development of OS\/360.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>See also:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Mythical_Man-Month\">The Mythical Man-Month<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Design-Essays-Computer-Scientist-ebook\/dp\/B003DKG5H6\/\">Design of Design<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.computerhistory.org\/resources\/access\/text\/2012\/11\/102658255-05-01-acc.pdf\">Oral History of Fred Brooks<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.computerhistory.org\/revolution\/mainframe-computers\/7\/162\/2270\">Birth of the 360 Project<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jasoncrawford\/status\/1593475495114420225\">Jason Crawford<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jasoncrawford\/status\/1593475495114420225\">\n<p>His work on operating systems at IBM gave us the 8-bit byte.<\/p>\n<p>Brooks was also the manager who approved Ted Codd&rsquo;s PhD&mdash;which enabled him to invent the relational database.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ID_AA_Carmack\/status\/1593618348620845058\">John Carmack<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ID_AA_Carmack\/status\/1593618348620845058\">\n<p>I have read <em>The Mythical Man Month<\/em> three times. Some of the wisdom really is timelessly applicable to creative human effort, but software development did escape much of Brooks&rsquo; pessimism with large scale open source component reuse.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2003\/03\/14\/quote_of_the_day\/\">&ldquo;All programmers are optimists.&rdquo;<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"fred-brooks-rip-update-2022-12-01\">Update (2022-12-01): <a href=\"https:\/\/circleid.com\/posts\/20221119-in-memoriam-frederick-p-brooks-jr-a-personal-recollection\">Steven Bellovin<\/a> (via <a href=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2022\/11\/19\/fred-brooks-rip\">John Gruber<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/circleid.com\/posts\/20221119-in-memoriam-frederick-p-brooks-jr-a-personal-recollection\">\n<p>He was also a lead on a failed project, the IBM 8000 series. He tried to resign from IBM after it failed; Watson replied, &ldquo;I just spent a billion dollars educating you; I&rsquo;m not letting you go now!&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>He then headed the project that designed and built the IBM S\/360 series of mainframes. It was an audacious concept for the time&mdash;five different models with vastly different prices and performance characteristics, but all sharing (essentially) the same instruction set.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>At Chapel Hill, he switched his attention to computer graphics and protein modeling. He&rsquo;d acquired a surplus remote manipulator arm; the idea was that people could use it to &ldquo;grab&rdquo; atoms and move them, and feel the force feedback from the varying charge fields. From there, it was a fairly natural transition to some of the early work in VR.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/news.slashdot.org\/story\/22\/11\/18\/1352233\/fred-brooks-has-died#comments\">Slashdot<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dag Spicer (Hacker News): Legendary computer architect Fred Brooks passed away today. Brooks led the team creating the timeless IBM System\/360 mainframe architecture as well as development of OS\/360. See also: The Mythical Man-Month Design of Design Oral History of Fred Brooks Birth of the 360 Project Jason Crawford: His work on operating systems at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2022-11-19T02:02:37Z","apple_news_api_id":"ffaf06cb-f1a6-4ae6-9c28-19a165338d21","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2022-12-01T20:33:33Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A_68Gy_GmSuacKBmhZTONIQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[27,295,697,71,208],"class_list":["post-37658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-craft","tag-history","tag-ibm","tag-programming","tag-rip"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37658"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37777,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37658\/revisions\/37777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}