I agree. A friend of mine, Jeb Long, was the dBase III+ team leader for Ashton Tate (he worked with Wayne at JPL). According to Jeb, there were eight or nine core programmers on the team. dBase III+ was a stable product.

Then came the MBA marketeers and dBase IV with 80+ programmers and, well, the rest is history.

Did you know that Ashton Tate almost bought FoxBase? Yup. Apparently, they tried to nickel and dime Dr. Dave to the point that the deal fell through. This was some time before the deal with Microsoft.


>I think 12 is plenty big for an effective group. I have a feeling that many of the people working on VB are working on user psychology and ergonomic issues instead of on hardcore technical stuff.
>
>If you have any doubts as to the detriments of oversized software teams, you should read "The Mythical Man-month" by Fred Brooks. It is an excellent book anyway...