For good reasons many people recommend book “The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering” when it comes to management of software projects. Reason is that it is one of the classical books on this matter. Recently I was also recommended this book. After reading it I realized that I grasped no new ideas or things that I did not know before. It is not because book is not good enough, but rather because it is very old and many other publications, I’ve read, have provided me with lots of up-to-date information. Not to mention, that many of these publications have been influenced by exactly this book.

Same was true for other person flying in same plane with Brooks, author of book:

The plane droned through the night toward LaGuardia. Clouds and darkness veiled all interesting sights. The document I was studying was pedestrian. I was not, however, bored. The stranger sitting next to me was reading The Mythical Man-Month, and I was waiting to see if by word or sign he would react. Finally as we taxied toward the gate, I could wait no longer:
“How is that book? Do you recommend it?”
“Hmph! Nothing in it I didn’t know already.” I decided not to introduce myself.

On the other hand, I got some insights into how software development looked like back in 70th.

Yes, I spelled it right. Book survived many years, mainly “because building things, including software, has always been as much about people as it has been about materials or technology – and people don’t change much in only 25 [35] years.”

I think that the strongest generalization from the book is this one:

“Assigning more programmers to a project running behind schedule, may make it even more late.”

To the topic, but not that much related. In book there is mentioning of Conway’s Law, which could sound like this:

“Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce systems which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.”

The other day I came across nice article called “Seeing the team in the code”. As per me lack of opened and frequent technical communication between developers, like code reviews, could make source code not really what team wants it to be. On the other hand, it could help make code less coupled, if everything is made by contract. Conway’s law sounds like fun, but each joke is based on truth behind. There is even Microsoft research paper on this: http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/70535/tr-2008-11.pdf. (Not easy to read or to follow.)

I would recommend this book in two cases: you have little or no clue of how development and management of big software projects is done OR if you want to just make sure you are familiar with this work to have more coherent view on the topic. In case you are average developer, who frequently reads recent books or posts on management/leadership/etc in software it is very likely that you will not enjoy this book. I also did not enjoy it very much, I probably fall into case number 2.

Thanks for reading…

In the light of Microsoft’s decision on the future of Silverlight it doesn’t sound heroic that I read "Silverlight 4 in Action" also taking into account that Pete Brown already released new edition of book for latest and last 5-th version of SL.

But I had read book couple of months ago before SL5 was released. I read it with my friends at work and it was joy.

“Silverlight 4 in Action” on Amazon

It is somewhat standard step by step tutorial on particular technology. But it provides really comprehensive look at Silverlight.

If you use this technology, book is great asset to understanding Silverlight.

This book is very interesting. Even it might not bring lot of eye-opening information for software developer as we are on the edge of innovations in many respects (my personal thought) it supplies us with information for deeper understanding of why we do what we do.

“Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” on Amazon

Indeed this books uncovers inner mechanisms of motivation gears inside of us. Some gears refuse to spin or just slip when we try to solve different problems. Sometimes we need to unpack brand new gears and install those to gain additional boost.

Book reveals evolution of motivation principles from Motivation 1.0 which is based on instincts to Motivation 2.0 which is based on stick and carrot and finally to Motivation 3.0 based on inner drive and not external factors.

Watch this video for inspiration:

RSA Animate – Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

Dear Reader, I would recommend this book for your leisure.

An astonishing book about life of amazing man, who changed the world.

“Steve Jobs” at Amazon

Book reveals many interesting facts about his youth, his addiction to the excellence of things, his contradictions and way he dealt with people.

For me reading this book was extremely enjoyable. I never thought that biography can be so much gripping and thought-provoking.

The more I think about the kick-off reason for him being so much great person the more I’m about to conclude that he attained success by constantly feeling that something is wrong with himself, and feeling the lack of something big in time when he was kid and youth. We know he was adopted son and he sought for wisdom in buddhism, and he took drugs and had other strange behavior. His strong self-confidence in his superior status allowed him to do stuff many would be scared to step into. His Reality Distortion Field allowed people do things they would never do.

From this book I got insight into what it means to be different, to live different, to think different and to build different world by your own acts.

Book is inspiring, provoking to think about world perception and business in deeper and more philosophical way.

Dear Reader, I would highly recommend you to read this book.

Finally this happened and I’ve read this long book. I started reading it probably 2 years ago :). I was not reading it all 2 years of course, I did it in 3 phases. For some reason (you can figure it out later in this post) I dropped it few times.

As “Code Complete” goes very long, I’m not sure I will be capable to write in any way corresponding review. But rather few words, so here they are:

“Code Complete” was intended to be comprehensive software development reference handbook with accent on construction. And indeed it was such kind of book maybe 10 or more years ago. I think that this book is bit outdated. Even with publishing 2cond edition contemporary trends are not included, rather they are are covered at surface. It can be even seen that they appeared later in the book. But we can look at this from positive perspective – which is learning how was programming when you dad was in charge :). In some places it was boring to read too-long and too much detailed explanations to obvious things. For example such trivial construction thing as loop was discussed in 20 pages long chapter. How many books do you know that observe loop from all possible viewpoints? Title of the book talks for itself.

Nevertheless “Code Complete” is full of examples and dozen of very interesting facts about software. In any way it was enjoyable to read brilliant metaphors, astonishing facts, discover new in known old. If you sharpening your skills and on your way of software craftsman “Code complete” has lot of advices for you, with references to hundreds of other books. In fact author worked hard to gather all information and create this masterpiece, and I’m really sorry that reality of software industry slightly kicks this book out of the shelf because of new technologies and new approaches to building software.

Do I recommend this book?

Yes, but don’t read it – review it and then read only the tasty bits.

Yeap what a gripping title for the book! It is in Russian originally and it talks about speaker skills, while comparing them to lover skills.

Time to time I deliver some speeches to local user group or at some events. I used to do this a lot inside of the company. After I talked about NHibernate at Kiev ALT.NET, I decided that it’s time to read some comprehensive thoughts from people who speak proficiently. So I took this book.

I cannot rate this book or say it is good or bad, because it is first book I read about speaking. Book is very simple, easy to read and rather short one. It compares giving public speech to the sex. Speaker has to be “man” in connection between him and audience. Also book provides you with lot of exact and specific tips on how to resolve particular presentation issues, such as nervous trembling, parasitic words, gesticulation, etc…

Despite that occasionally I thought some of the things written ridiculously, I enjoyed reading very much and found many advices I’m going to use next time speaking for you.

You might want to go and visit Author’s web site: http://www.radislavgandapas.com/

Finally I have another post on read book (after so long time not reading posting). This time book is on software estimation called “Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art”.

This is first book that I read about estimation end-to-end, and I have to say that it is extremely good and I think it covers most of the topics needed to be able to see how estimation works.

It consists with three parts, each gives you good set of knowledge, first one on core concepts, second on fundamental techniques and third one on challenges you might dive in when estimating.

Honestly I started to read this book, because I knew that I will have presentation/training to deliver. I heard about most of the concepts mentioned in book, but (!) book gave great insight into them and from different perspectives so I started to wish that I had reconsidered all of the many estimates I gave in the past.

I would really recommend you to read this book as it helps you to think deeper when working on estimates.