Deserves the black bar, in my view. Probably one of the most widely-discussed and most oft-cited writers among hackers of multiple generations.

He will always be remembered for “Brooks’s Law”, colloquially, “adding people to a late software project makes it later”:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law

And for his timeless essay, “No Silver Bullet”, which introduced the idea of accidental vs essential complexity in software:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet

RIP.