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RE: Foundation books (Was: The Mythical Man-Month)
Subject:RE: Foundation books (Was: The Mythical Man-Month) From:"Gordon McLean" <Gordon -dot- McLean -at- GrahamTechnology -dot- com> To:"'Stuart Burnfield'" <slb -at- westnet -dot- com -dot- au>, <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 20 Jun 2007 08:58:08 +0100
I've been pondering this recently.
I'd through in The Tipping Point, Blink, Make it Stick, Wisdom of Crowds, 12
Laws of Simplicity ... For a start. None of them are software related but
each has given me 'pause' to think and re-consider how I work, even if
indirectly.
Gordon
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+gordon -dot- mclean=grahamtechnology -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+gordon -dot- mclean=grahamtechnology -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- c
om] On Behalf Of Stuart Burnfield
Sent: 20 June 2007 02:31
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Foundation books (Was: The Mythical Man-Month)
Some books don't yield practical tips that you could apply immediately to
your work, but instead provide a foundation for how you approach work for
years to come.
I don't know if there's a name for this class of books; in the Subject line
I've called them 'foundation books'. They're not just good books, great
books, influential books. They provide the foundation or framework for the
specific knowledge you acquire and apply elsewhere. As Sarah says, they make
sense of experiences that you've had but never quite been able to put
together before.
The Mythical Man-Month is one such book for me. Others are Peopleware, by
Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, and The Design of Everyday Things, by Don
Norman.
A borderline case is Alan Cooper's book About Face. It does have a lot of
practical advice, but it also gave me a theoretical basis to explain
problems I'd experienced in software development projects.
Can anyone else name some foundation books?
Stuart
Sarah Bouchier said:
> After all the discussion and recommendation of 'The Mythical >
Man-Month' a couple of weeks back, I got curious, acquired a copy, > and
have just finished reading it. It blew me away; everything > made so much
/sense/, and has been totally supported by my > experiences in several
companies that plainly /hadn't/ read it!
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