Software Experts
Debate Leadership Qualities
and the Hazards of Shortcuts and Stupid Tricks
About the Book
Joined by coeditors Marie Benesh and James Bullock, consultant's consultant
Gerald M. Weinberg highlights forty experts' secrets for building and sustaining
a leadership role in software development. Participants of the SHAPE forum,
many of them software consultants and managers at the world's most successful
software companies, logged in to help each other identify the "stupid tricks"
that developers are tempted to employ in design, code, and documentation—tricks
that seem clever in the short term but have damaging long-term effects.
Topics include programming, design, documentation, teaching, learning, educating
management, being yourself, and much more. Presented in an easy-to-read
dialogue format, true to the comments' original appearance on the Web, this is
the second stand-alone book drawn from Weinberg's SHAPE forum, following Roundtable
on Project Management. Contributors include Jim
Batterson, James Bullock, Pat
Ferdinandi, Fritz, Phil
Fuhrer, Jesse Gordon, Don
Gray, Brian Gulino, Peter
Harris, Joseph Howard, Kevin
Huigens, Steve Jackson, James
Jarrett, Bob King, Dave
Kleist, Henry Knapp, Brian
Knopp, Fredric Laurentine, Pat
McGee, Nate McNamara, George
Olsen, Mark Passolt, Sue
Petersen, Dwayne Phillips, Brian
Richter, Sharon Marsh Roberts, Brett
Schuchert, Stuart Scott, Dave
Smith, Steve Smith, Daniel
Starr, Wayne Strider, Pete
TerMaat, Phil Trice, Bill
Trierweiler, Marianne Tromp, Jerry
Weinberg, and Kay Wise.
Reviews
| "Shared parables, aphorisms, and classifications
greatly increase the dialogue's depth and efficiency . . . "If you
don't read anything else in the book . . . the discussion of 'stupid design document
tricks' will still give you your money's worth." —Richard
Mateosian
IEEE Micro
"Presented in dialogue form,
this discussion among consultants, IT managers, software developers, systems architects,
analysts, designers, engineers, and others in the field focuses on the means by
which leadership is developed. Topics include programming, design, documentation,
teaching, learning, educating management, and being yourself. The roles of experts,
as leaders, teachers, and learners, are explicated, and advice is offered on avoiding
'stupid tricks.'" —Book News, Inc.
"The advice in the book is some of the best that I have ever read.
There is none of the egotistical posturing that pervades so many of the online
forums, the contributors are genuinely humble and realistic. I found them refreshing,
entertaining and likable. ". . . So many technical books contain quality
information, but the style of presentation is dense to the point of mind lock
or something like a pot of dishwater containing gold nuggets. The good stuff is
present, you just have to dig around to find it. This book is neither, the lightness
of the prose and the candor of the participants makes it entertaining, and the
quality of the advice makes it valuable. When designing software, we all step
in it from time to time, and if you read this book you can reduce the frequency
of that happening to you." —Charles Ashbacher
posted on Amazon.com | |
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