Fred Brooks 1931-2022

Fred Brooks was a computer engineer at IBM who was put in charge of the OS/360 project that was crucial for the company’s survival and behind schedule.  He tried to quit but the CEO told him “I just sent a billion dollars education you; I’m not letting you go now.”  Back then, each computer had its own distinctive hardware design, so engineers had to write new software for each model.  Brooks create the first operating system that worked across multiple computers.  Basically, the precursor for Windows and Mac OS 🙂  He also chose an 8-bit byte so that we could have lower case letters which is still the standard today.

What made Brooks famous though was his book The Mystical Man-Month a treatise on project management and software engineering.  Some of it’s sayings were “adding manpower to a late project only makes it later.”, “The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.”

After he left IBM, he went on to found one of the first Computer Science departments at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.