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
- Title Page
- Dedication
- CONTENTS
- ABOUT THE EDITOR
- ABOUT THE AUTHORS
- INTRODUCTION
- Ken Arnold: STYLE IS SUBSTANCE
- Leon Bambrick: AWARD FOR THE SILLIEST USER INTERFACE: WINDOWS SEARCH
- Michael Bean: THE PITFALLS OF OUTSOURCING PROGRAMMERS Why Some Software Companies Confuse the Box with the Chocolates
- Rory Blyth: EXCEL AS A DATABASE
- Adam Bosworth: ICSOC04 TALK
- danah boyd: AUTISTIC SOCIAL SOFTWARE
- Raymond Chen: WHY NOT JUST BLOCK THE APPS THAT RELY ON UNDOCUMENTED BEHAVIOR?
- Kevin Cheng and Tom Chi: KICKING THE LLAMA
- Cory Doctorow: SAVE CANADA'S INTERNET FROM WIPO
- ea_spouse: EA: THE HUMAN STORY
- Bruce Eckel: STRONG TYPING VS. STRONG TESTING
- Paul Ford: PROCESSING PROCESSING
- Paul Graham: GREAT HACKERS
- John Gruber: THE LOCATION FIELD IS THE NEW COMMAND LINE
- Gregor Hohpe: STARBUCKS DOES NOT USE TWO-PHASE COMMIT
- Ron Jeffries: PASSION
- Eric Johnson: C++—THE FORGOTTEN TROJAN HORSE
- Eric Lippert: HOW MANY MICROSOFT EMPLOYEES DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB?
- Michael "Rands" Lopp: WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU'RE SCREWED
- Larry Osterman: LARRY'S RULES OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING #2: MEASURING TESTERS BY TEST METRICS DOESN'T
-
Mary Poppendieck: TEAM COMPENSATION
- The Morning After
- The Aftershocks
- Dysfunction #1: Competition
- Dysfunction #2: The Perception of Unfairness
- Dysfunction #3: The Perception of Impossibility
- Dysfunction #4: Suboptimization
- Dysfunction #5: Destroying Intrinsic Motivation
- One Week Later
- Guideline #1: Make Sure the Promotion System Is Unassailable
- Guideline #2: De-emphasize the Merit Pay System
- Guideline #3: Tie Profit Sharing to Economic Drivers
- Guideline # 4: Reward Based on Span of Influence, Not Span of Control
- Guideline #5: Find Better Motivators than Money
- Six Months Later
- Rick Schaut: MAC WORD 6.0
- Clay Shirky: A GROUP IS ITS OWN WORST ENEMY
- Clay Shirky: GROUP AS USER: FLAMING AND THE DESIGN OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE
- Eric Sink: CLOSING THE GAP, PART 1
-
Eric Sink: CLOSING THE GAP, PART 2
- Responsive Sales
- 1. Make Sure Customers Know About Your Product
- 2. Make Sure Your Product Is Something Customers Want
- 3. Make Sure They Can Afford Your Product
- Further Reading
- 4. Offer a Full-Featured Demo Download
- 5. Answer the Customers' Questions
- 6. Provide a Place for Community
- 7. Make It Easy to Buy Over the Web
- But We Can't Do It This Way!
- We're Not Perfect
-
Eric Sink: HAZARDS OF HIRING
- 1. Hire After the Need, Not Before
- 2. Realize That Hiring Is All About Probabilities
- 3. Know the Law
- 4. Get a Variety of Opinions
- Hiring Programmers: The Usual Advice
- Look for Self-Awareness
- Hire Developers, Not Programmers
- Education Is Good
- But Too Much Education Is a Yellow Light
- Look at the Code
- The Very Best
- Aaron Swartz: POWERPOINT REMIX
- why the lucky stiff: A QUICK (AND HOPEFULLY PAINLESS) RIDE THROUGH RUBY (WITH CARTOON FOXES)
- INDEX
- COLOPHON
Product information
- Title: THE BEST SOFTWARE WRITING I
- Author(s):
- Release date: June 2005
- Publisher(s): Apress
- ISBN: 9781590595008
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