Top all-time · #1417
Melvin Conway
Personal blog · melconway.comprogrammingcareer
Melvin Conway's personal blog at melconway.com covers programming and career. Since 2007, 53 different Hacker News readers have linked it 62 times, most often “How Do Committees Invent? (1968)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- How Do Committees Invent? (1968)9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2012-11-01
- Conway's Law8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2011-11-22
- How do Committees Invent? (1968) [pdf]7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2022-01-20
- Conway's Law (A software system will resemble the organization that built it)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2007-11-23
- Design of a Separable Transition-Diagram Compiler (1963) [pdf]3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-06-07
- “Humanizing Application Building” by Mel Conway [pdf]3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-11-24
- /Home/Conways_Law.html3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-02-11
- Do Committees Invent? (1968)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-12-29
- Toward Simplifying Application Development, in a Dozen Lessons [pdf]2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-08
- Conway's Law2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-02
What Hacker News says?
For anyone curious why these inconsistencies happen: https://youtu.be/5IUj1EZwpJY https://www.melconway.com/Home/pdf/committees.pdf
Comment linking /Home/pdf/committees.pdf
on “Windows needs a change in priorities”Submitted Conway's Law as a story · 81 points
HN discussionHere's where I got it: http://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html
Comment linking /Home/Committees_Paper.html
on “The Website Obesity Crisis”Submitted How Do Committees Invent? (1968) as a story · 42 points
HN discussion> Just out of curiosity, what alternatives are there to avoid API dependencies? Very important how the boundaries a drawn. Generally, the more fragmented the micro-services the more API dependencies. Also, look at the Bounded Context concept. https://martinfowler.com/bliki/BoundedContext.html And Conway's Law certainly plays a role. http://www.melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html > At some level, is it really possibl…
Comment linking /Home/Conways_Law.html
on “The Death of Microservice Madness in 2018”Submitted How do Committees Invent? (1968) [pdf] as a story · 37 points
HN discussionSee also: Conway's Law. http://melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html
Comment linking /Home/Conways_Law.html
on “Software Architecture Guide”Submitted The Tower of Babel and the Fighter Plane (2013) [pdf] as a story · 33 points
HN discussionI worked at Google. An observation: The internal codebase should be structured like the yellow-pages of a phonebook[1] but instead it's structured like a flea market. Now, consider that in light of Conway's Law[2]... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonebook [2] http://melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html
Comment linking /Home/Conways_Law.html
on “How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?”Submitted Humanize the Craft of Building Interactive Computer Applications [pdf] as a story · 32 points
HN discussionAnd the paper that inspired it, Melvin Conway's "How Do Committees Invent?" http://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html
Comment linking /Home/Committees_Paper.html
on “Ask HN: What is your favorite CS paper?”Submitted “Humanizing Application Building” by Mel Conway [pdf] as a story · 26 points
HN discussionAnd I'd add the paper that inspired Brooks, Melvin Conway's "How Do Committees Invent?". http://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html
Comment linking /Home/Committees_Paper.html
on “Ask HN: What is your favorite CS paper?”Submitted Conway's Law (A software system will resemble the organization that built it) as a story · 18 points
HN discussionConway's Law [0] is an essential aspect for large scale software development: > Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure. [0] http://www.melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html
Comment linking /Home/Conways_Law.html
on “Ask HN: CS papers for software architecture and design?”Submitted How Do Committees Invent? (1968) as a story · 12 points
HN discussionConway's law - I don't think it's a joke at all. Like most things in software engineering, it's qualitative and empirical - but also has very strong potential to function as a supporting "first principles" theory for so many things. Conway - "How committees innovate" http://www.melconway.com/Home/pdf/committees.pdf I think this paper has a fantastic corollary in Peter Naur's "Programming as theory building" which tr…
Comment linking /Home/pdf/committees.pdf
on “Ask HN: Where can I see many examples of real companies' software architecture?”Submitted The Humane Dozen (2017) [pdf] as a story · 8 points
HN discussion... they are largely built by committee Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure. -Mel Conway ( http://www.melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html )
Comment linking /Home/Conways_Law.html
on “The Web’s Cruft Problem”Submitted How do committees invent? (1968) [pdf] as a story · 4 points
HN discussion"How committees invent" https://www.melconway.com/Home/pdf/committees.pdf
Comment linking /Home/pdf/committees.pdf
on “Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?”Submitted Design of a Separable Transition-Diagram Compiler (1963) [pdf] as a story · 3 points
HN discussion>> A Technical Solution To A People Problem I think the author has correctly identified the reason but the given explaination is wildly off base. There's a much better answer to this and interestingly it predates the term "microservice" by around 40 years! In 1968 the Conway, Melvin E. had his paper "How Do Committes Invent?" published, you can read it here: https://www.melconway.com/Home/pdf/committees.pdf (since t…
Comment linking /Home/pdf/committees.pdf
on “Microservices: Why Are We Doing This?”Submitted Conway's Law as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI'd second the appeals to authority argument, if only on the grounds that science (the institution) is exactly that: an institution. It is also a game: http://www.melconway.com/Urban_Teaching/pdf/what_is_science....
Comment linking /Urban_Teaching/pdf/what_is_science.pdf
on “Nine years of censorship”Submitted How do committees invent? [pdf] as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> Don’t get confused between using smaller keywords and actually understanding the problem at hand. Absolutely. I'm not arguing for maximal terseness and spent a lot of words attempting to say otherwise. (IMHO, we're both reflexively reacting to our parent comments a bit). What I am wanting to point out is that form affects function and how we think about and use our languages. This in turn shapes our ecosystems and…
Comment linking /Home/Committees_Paper.html
on “Arthur Whitney's one liner sudoku solver (2011)”Submitted Conway Law(1967)-sys/app design is a copy of the org's structure that designs it as a story · 3 points
HN discussionNobody has mentioned the “Do Committees invent” paper by Melvin Conway. It’s the origin of Conway law, but the actual paper is way deeper than that https://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html
Comment linking /Home/Committees_Paper.html
on “Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?”Submitted How Do Committees Invent? – Melvin E. Conway (1968) as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
