I was very disappointed in this book. It came highly recommended.
Paul manages to make a few loose, vague, and highly opinionated points amidst an onslaught of words.
He starts with way too much rationalization for why he felt outcast in middle and highschool. While I can relate, after the first chapter, I started to think I too would have picked on him.
He then gets into some fairly good material, but the book seems to wander around like several stitched together essays. I came away with a vague sense of his views on software development and a strong sense that because he likes art and programming, they must be kindred.
He finishes up with another extremely lengthy diatribe about how Lisp rocks and all other languages merely aspire to grow up and be Lisp. He could have said it in a single chapter.
In 5 words? Loquacious, self-serving, loose, painful, pointless.
Paul manages to make a few loose, vague, and highly opinionated points amidst an onslaught of words.
He starts with way too much rationalization for why he felt outcast in middle and highschool. While I can relate, after the first chapter, I started to think I too would have picked on him.
He then gets into some fairly good material, but the book seems to wander around like several stitched together essays. I came away with a vague sense of his views on software development and a strong sense that because he likes art and programming, they must be kindred.
He finishes up with another extremely lengthy diatribe about how Lisp rocks and all other languages merely aspire to grow up and be Lisp. He could have said it in a single chapter.
In 5 words? Loquacious, self-serving, loose, painful, pointless.
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity by Alan Cooper
I was not particularly enamored with this book. Cooper spends the first eight chapters deriding developers in general and recounting failure after failure due to lack of UX/UCD in the process. While I suppose it was important at the time to stress the need for the solution, I felt it could have been done in a much more concise manner.
The last several chapters are good and worth a read.
You can skip the first several as long as you accept two things as "fact". 1 - developers are jerk and bullies who don't care about you and 2- projects with the wrong focus usually fail.
The last several chapters are good and worth a read.
You can skip the first several as long as you accept two things as "fact". 1 - developers are jerk and bullies who don't care about you and 2- projects with the wrong focus usually fail.