The parallel with Mythical Man Month resonates with me.
Of course 'executing code' and 'human minds' are bound by physics, that's a relatively uninteresting insight.
The point is: the process of human minds writing software is constrained by the understanding of single human minds. So the 'meta task' of software engineering becomes working around that constraint.
That's why decomposition is such a powerful tool for large software system development because it:
a. reduces the amount of working memory a single mind needs to make a change and
b. lets more human minds work on the solution in parallel without forcing every mind to understand everything about the overall system
Of course 'executing code' and 'human minds' are bound by physics, that's a relatively uninteresting insight.
The point is: the process of human minds writing software is constrained by the understanding of single human minds. So the 'meta task' of software engineering becomes working around that constraint.
That's why decomposition is such a powerful tool for large software system development because it:
a. reduces the amount of working memory a single mind needs to make a change and
b. lets more human minds work on the solution in parallel without forcing every mind to understand everything about the overall system