THE BEST SOFTWARE WRITING I

THE BEST SOFTWARE WRITING I

Released June 2005
Publisher(s): Apress
ISBN: 9781590595008

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Book description

It's nice having a collection of high-quality writing related to software and the business in one place instead of trawling the Web for it. Meryl K. Evans, meryl. ...an entertaining read with a number of enlightening insights into what I do for a living... The whole book is fantastic though, and you should absolutely pick it up...in dead tree form. This is a book worth checking out, even if you're not a software developer.

With a nod to both the serious and funny sides of technical writing, The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky is an entertaining read and a guide to the technical writing literati.

The Best Software Writing contains writings from:

  • Ken Arnold

  • Leon Bambrick

  • Michael Bean

  • Rory Blyth

  • Adam Bosworth

  • danah boyd

  • Raymond Chen

  • Kevin Cheng and Tom Chi

  • Cory Doctorow

  • ea_spouse

  • Bruce Eckel

  • Paul Ford

  • Paul Graham

  • John Gruber

  • Gregor Hohpe

  • Ron Jeffries

  • Eric Johnson

  • Eric Lippert

  • Michael Lopp

  • Larry Osterman

  • Mary Poppendieck

  • Rick Schaut

  • Aaron Swart

  • Clay Shirky

  • Eric Sink

  • why the lucky stiff

Table of contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Dedication
  3. CONTENTS
  4. ABOUT THE EDITOR
  5. ABOUT THE AUTHORS
  6. INTRODUCTION
  7. Ken Arnold: STYLE IS SUBSTANCE
  8. Leon Bambrick: AWARD FOR THE SILLIEST USER INTERFACE: WINDOWS SEARCH
    1. So You'd Like to Search for Something!
  9. Michael Bean: THE PITFALLS OF OUTSOURCING PROGRAMMERS Why Some Software Companies Confuse the Box with the Chocolates
    1. Why Some Software Companies Confuse the Box with the Chocolates
    2. Design and Assembly Are Different
  10. Rory Blyth: EXCEL AS A DATABASE
  11. Adam Bosworth: ICSOC04 TALK
  12. danah boyd: AUTISTIC SOCIAL SOFTWARE
    1. Sociable Media, Sci-Fi, and Mental Illness
    2. Autism and Attention Deficit Disorder
    3. Socially Inept Computers
    4. Friendster's Success
    5. Situating Technology in Practice
  13. Raymond Chen: WHY NOT JUST BLOCK THE APPS THAT RELY ON UNDOCUMENTED BEHAVIOR?
  14. Kevin Cheng and Tom Chi: KICKING THE LLAMA
  15. Cory Doctorow: SAVE CANADA'S INTERNET FROM WIPO
  16. ea_spouse: EA: THE HUMAN STORY
  17. Bruce Eckel: STRONG TYPING VS. STRONG TESTING
  18. Paul Ford: PROCESSING PROCESSING
  19. Paul Graham: GREAT HACKERS
    1. Edisons
    2. More than Money
    3. The Final Frontier
    4. Interesting
    5. Nasty Little Problems
    6. Clumping
    7. Recognition
    8. Cultivation
  20. John Gruber: THE LOCATION FIELD IS THE NEW COMMAND LINE
    1. Who Loses As Web Apps Win?
  21. Gregor Hohpe: STARBUCKS DOES NOT USE TWO-PHASE COMMIT
    1. Hotto Cocoa o Kudasai
    2. Correlation
    3. Exception Handling
    4. Conversations
    5. Real Life Architecture
  22. Ron Jeffries: PASSION
    1. Grampa Speaks
    2. Born for Passion
  23. Eric Johnson: C++—THE FORGOTTEN TROJAN HORSE
  24. Eric Lippert: HOW MANY MICROSOFT EMPLOYEES DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB?
  25. Michael "Rands" Lopp: WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU'RE SCREWED
    1. #1) I'm Missing a Document and People Are Yelling at Me
    2. #2) A Significant Development Tool Does Not Exist on My Team
    3. #3) I Can't Stand My Product/Program Manager or They Plain Don't Exist
    4. #4) My Product Is Nowhere Near Done
    5. #5) My Company/Job Sucks or Is About to Suck
  26. Larry Osterman: LARRY'S RULES OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING #2: MEASURING TESTERS BY TEST METRICS DOESN'T
  27. Mary Poppendieck: TEAM COMPENSATION
    1. The Morning After
    2. The Aftershocks
    3. Dysfunction #1: Competition
    4. Dysfunction #2: The Perception of Unfairness
    5. Dysfunction #3: The Perception of Impossibility
    6. Dysfunction #4: Suboptimization
    7. Dysfunction #5: Destroying Intrinsic Motivation
    8. One Week Later
    9. Guideline #1: Make Sure the Promotion System Is Unassailable
    10. Guideline #2: De-emphasize the Merit Pay System
    11. Guideline #3: Tie Profit Sharing to Economic Drivers
    12. Guideline # 4: Reward Based on Span of Influence, Not Span of Control
    13. Guideline #5: Find Better Motivators than Money
    14. Six Months Later
  28. Rick Schaut: MAC WORD 6.0
    1. Mac Word 5 and Pyramid
    2. Exit Jeff Raikes, Enter Chris Peters
    3. Technical Hurdles
    4. Technical Achievement
    5. Learning the Meaning of "Mac-Like"
  29. Clay Shirky: A GROUP IS ITS OWN WORST ENEMY
    1. Part One: How Is a Group Its Own Worst Enemy?
    2. Part Two: Why Now?
    3. Part Three: What Can We Take for Granted?
    4. Conclusion
  30. Clay Shirky: GROUP AS USER: FLAMING AND THE DESIGN OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE
    1. Learning from Flame Wars
    2. Netiquette and Kill Files
    3. The Tragedy of the Conversational Commons
    4. Weblog and Wiki Responses
    5. Reviving Old Tools
    6. Novel Operations on Social Facts
    7. Rapid, Iterative Experimentation
  31. Eric Sink: CLOSING THE GAP, PART 1
    1. Proactive Sales
    2. Working with a Sales Guy
    3. Characteristics of a Sales Guy
    4. One More Mandatory Trait for a Sales Guy
    5. Reasons to Have a Sales Guy
    6. The "No Sales Guy" Approach
    7. The Bottom Line
  32. Eric Sink: CLOSING THE GAP, PART 2
    1. Responsive Sales
    2. 1. Make Sure Customers Know About Your Product
    3. 2. Make Sure Your Product Is Something Customers Want
    4. 3. Make Sure They Can Afford Your Product
    5. Further Reading
    6. 4. Offer a Full-Featured Demo Download
    7. 5. Answer the Customers' Questions
    8. 6. Provide a Place for Community
    9. 7. Make It Easy to Buy Over the Web
    10. But We Can't Do It This Way!
    11. We're Not Perfect
  33. Eric Sink: HAZARDS OF HIRING
    1. 1. Hire After the Need, Not Before
    2. 2. Realize That Hiring Is All About Probabilities
    3. 3. Know the Law
    4. 4. Get a Variety of Opinions
    5. Hiring Programmers: The Usual Advice
    6. Look for Self-Awareness
    7. Hire Developers, Not Programmers
    8. Education Is Good
    9. But Too Much Education Is a Yellow Light
    10. Look at the Code
    11. The Very Best
  34. Aaron Swartz: POWERPOINT REMIX
  35. why the lucky stiff: A QUICK (AND HOPEFULLY PAINLESS) RIDE THROUGH RUBY (WITH CARTOON FOXES)
    1. Language and I Mean Language
    2. The Parts of Speech
    3. If I Haven't Treated You Like a Child Enough Already
    4. An Example to Help You Grow Up
    5. And So, the Quick Trip Came to an Eased, Cushioned Halt
  36. INDEX
  37. COLOPHON

Product information

  • Title: THE BEST SOFTWARE WRITING I
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: June 2005
  • Publisher(s): Apress
  • ISBN: 9781590595008