Tag Archives: Books

Clean Code – Mandatory Reading for Developers

All developers should need to read Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert C. Martin.

If time prevents you from reading an entire book, then at least read this chapter: “17. Smells and Heuristics”.

One of my favourite bits of advice (that actually comes up a lot in discussions with the developers around me) is captured in this paragraph:

There is hardly anything more abominable than a dangling false argument at the end of a function call. What does it mean? What would it change if it were true? Not only is the purpose of a selector argument difficult to remember, each selector argument combines many functions into one. Selector arguments are just a lazy way to avoid splitting a large function into several smaller functions.

The book is filled with code examples, describes concepts rather than programming language idiosyncrasies, and is useful even for seasoned programmers.

Whatever language you code in (today), this book is likely to become a fixture on your desk for a very long time after you’ve finished reading it. Get the paperback version, and fill it with colourful post it notes.

Link

The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage.

The Design of Business

The Design of Business

 

I just read this book, and it was good. Not quite 5-stars good, but a good book nonetheless. A couple of chapters definitely stand out. The P&G analysis is fantastic, while the RIM introspection is hilarious. To be fair, it’s only funny because RIM stopped doing what the book is praising them for.

Here are a some of the notes I took (hopefully I don’t break copyright):

The minute you start analyzing and using consumer research, you drive all the creativity out of the product.

No good product was ever created from quantitative market research. Great products spring from the heart and soul of a great designer, unencumbered by committees, processes, or analyses.

Even as corporate leaders chase the vital, elusive spark of creativity, their organizations structures, processes, and norms extinguish it wherever it flares up.

Once knowledge has been pushed to a logical, arithmetic, or computational procedure, it can be reduced to software.

In most large business organizations, three forces converge to enshrine reliability and marginalize validity: the demand that an idea be proved before it is implemented, an aversion to bias, and the constraints of time.

An organization that engages exclusively in exploitation will ordinarily suffer from obsolescence.

Of the original Fortune 100 companies, published in 1955, only eleven are still on the list.

When a team can come together around a creative cause or a knotty problem, they want to come to work every day.

Laliberté (founder of Cirque du Soleil) had done no research to forecast the size of the market for his new form of circus. How could he? The market did not yet exist.

and finally, one of my favourites:

Mastery without originality becomes a cul-de-sac.

Next on my list: Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

 

Link

Michael Lopp’s Being Geek: The Software Developer’s Career Handbook
is a book I wish that my team don’t read. At the same time, I hope that my current and all my future managers have already read it.

Despite being a collection of “Rands in Repose” posts, this book is surprisingly readable. I can definitely see how a senior developer, an HR manager, and a team Leader (uppercase “L” is not a typo) would benefit from skimming this book over one weekend.

Bonus: You can learn a couple of social games while reading this book: Werewolf, and Back Alley Bridge.

Kindle Paperwhite – The Voyage was not for me

After a fair bit of research I decided to upgrade from my (basic) Kindle to the Kindle Paperwhite.

Kindle Paperwhite

Kindle Paperwhite, 212ppi, 16-level gray scale

Why upgrade?

My previous Kindle was great. I didn’t feel like I needed the touch screen, and using the 5 directional button was fine. The main thing that I wished for was backlight. In the past, I would read on my Kindle during the day (especially outdoors), and on my iPad Mini at night. I’m hoping that now I can just use one device…

Why not the Voyage?

The Kindle Voyage looks great. I wish that the Paperwhite had physical page turn buttons, but I can’t justify spending $120 more for page-press sensors, 300ppi (rather than 212ppi for the Paperwhite), and adaptive light. I’ll just buy a dozen books with that money instead!

Why not read on the iPad Mini?

I could make up tons of reasons, but the truth is that I’m just not disciplined enough. I love my iPad Mini and I just get distracted by all the apps and things that I could be doing.