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From: Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: The Design of Design
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2024 20:56:05 -0000 (UTC)
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I've  just read (most of) "The Design of Design" by Fred Brooks,
especially the chapters dealing with the design of the /360,
and it's certainly worth reading.  (I had finished "The Mythical
Man-Month" before).  There are chapters on computer and software
architectures, but also something on a house he himself built.

An interesting detail about the /360 design was that they originally
wanted to do a stack-based machine.  It would have been OK for the
mid- and high-end machines, but on low-end machines it would have
been undompetetive, so they rejected that approach.

He discusses the book on computer architecture he co-authored with
Gerrit Blaauw in it (as a project).  Would be _very_ nice to read,
but the price on Amazon is somewhat steep, a bit more than 150 Euros. 

One thing about Brooks - he is not shy of criticizing his own
works when his views changed.  I liked his scathing comments on JCL
so much that I put them in the Wikipedia article :-)

His main criticism of his own book on computer architecture was
that it treated computer architecture as a finite field which had
been explored already.

@John S: Not sure if you've read "The Design of Design", but if you
haven't, you probably should.  It might help you to refocus in your
quest to recreate a S/360 (especially the requirement to get the
architecture to work well on a very small machine like the 360/30).

Soo... good to read.  Anything else?