The Design of Design
by Frederick P. Brooks · first published 2010
68% recommend26% neutral6% critical
Why HN recommends it
Brooks on the design process beyond visual design, using his own house-building as the main example. Covers conceptual integrity, one person owning quality, and early vs late decision binding
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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"The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist" by Frederick P. Brooks [1] is language-agnostic and worth reading. It's about software engineering but also about hardware and some different kinds of design outside…
on “Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?” ↗…using that library myself) but the framework/libraries used is second to the cause of teaching anyway and I think it makes sense that they used it to abstract away some of the boilerplate stuff. 6. The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist. Frederick P. Jr. Brooks. 2010. Addison-Wesley Professional. I liked this one a lot. So much that I had to include it even though we've already mentioned five books.…
on “MIT lecturer Ana Bell discusses books to learn CS and programming” ↗I would also recommend the follow-up book entitled "The Design of Design" also by Frederick Brooks
on “Ask HN: What books should I read as a software manager?” ↗If you read that and like it, try The Design of Design by Fred Brooks, in which he talks about on a high level how the design process works; good teachings about the flaws of the waterfall model.
on “Ask HN: What's the best computer science book you've read recently?” ↗Another reading suggestion along those lines is "The design of design" by Fred Brooks (of Mythical Man Month fame). He discusses design approaches as uses his process of building his own house as the primary example: https://www.amazon.com/Design-Essays-Computer-Scientist/dp/0...
on “Christopher Alexander: A Primer [video]” ↗A nice short list of design principles/techniques. I'd also recommend The Design of Design [1] by Fred Brooks (of The Mythical Man-Month fame). The article's final "Postpone Complexity" principle reminded me of Brooks' discussion of early vs. late decision binding. My main take-away is that…
on “Principles for Better Design” ↗I really enjoyed his book “The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist” https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7157080-the-design-of-de... RIP Mr. Brooks
on “Fred Brooks has died” ↗It's worth reading The Design of Design by Fred Brooks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Design
on “You can't tell people anything” ↗For non-management related things: "Mythical Man-Month, The: Essays on Software Engineering" by Frederick Brooks Jr. "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell "The Design of Design" by Fred Brooks "Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of Software Engineering Manager" by Michael Lopp "The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary"…
on “Ask HN: Books to read to get better at designing software systems?” ↗* Douglas Hofstadter - Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid * Fred Brooks - Design Of Design * Fred Brooks - The Mythical Man month * Eric J. Evans - Domain Driven Design * Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software * Kent Beck - Extreme Programming Explained * Kent Beck…
on “Ask HN: What books had the greatest effect on how you structure your code?” ↗…David M. (Eds.): Software Fundamentals – Collected Papers by David L. Parnas, 2001, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-70369-6. You might also like my later book on technical design in general: The Design of Design. Start with Part II.
on “Fred Brooks has died” ↗…overbuild. It's true that dynamic programming languages, tools like git, and rapid prototyping have made some of his examples feel dated. However, the underlying principles are still solid. Hopefully 'The Design of Design' is a similar goldmine. Even if it's only half as good as MMM, it's still earned a slot on my bookshelf.
on “New Book by Fred Brooks - The Design of Design” ↗…expressionistic; by pigeonholing your perception of any design whether it be Code, Math or Art to either Logic xor Expression you are blinding yourself The other angle for GEB is design I read GEB along with Design of Design years ago following my mentor at the times suggestion, I would highly recommend doing this. Think of it as the Gödel, Escher, Bach, Brooks (Although Brook's writing style can be laborious at times) Recognizing…
on “Ask HN: What books had the greatest effect on how you structure your code?” ↗I can recommend The Design of Design. It's a bit chatty, but I haven't seen the material in there elsewhere, and it did change my perspective quite a bit, to the point where I could see some "conventional wisdom" at the time being entirely…
on “Fred Brooks has died” ↗…Retargetable C Compiler * John Lakos: Large-Scale C++ Software Design * VA: Beautiful {Code, Data, Testing} * Design pattern books maybe * Code Complete * Fred Brooks: The Mythical Man Month * Fred Brooks: Design of Design * "Best of" books like C++ Pearls or More C++ Pearls * Michael Abrash: Grapics Programming Black Book * Looking at John Carmack code, eg. in my github repo at http://github.com/mtrencseni * In the…
on “Ask HN: Suggested software /design/ books?” ↗