Note: I was reading the 1985 edition of the book by the same authors with the same title.
The book itself was well done. If I had had the chance to use a PICK system in the early 90's I would have appreciated having this thorough guide. I was impressed that they didn't stay at the user level only, but delved into systems administration, accessing peripherals, and design details of the storage system.
My only regrets about the book are that they chapter on BASIC was surprisingly brief and I would have loved to see more complicated examples. Maybe those things were improved in the 1989 edition.
Despite all of that I was not left with the feeling that it would be fun to revive one of these systems and get to play with it again. We are much better off with SQL and ORMLs and the many other flavors of modern database and development environments. I had hoped that I would see something in PICK that would shed light on how to build developer-friendly systems with modern tools. Instead I'm really glad we've evolved so far past it that it PICK's relevance is mainly historic.
The book itself was well done. If I had had the chance to use a PICK system in the early 90's I would have appreciated having this thorough guide. I was impressed that they didn't stay at the user level only, but delved into systems administration, accessing peripherals, and design details of the storage system.
My only regrets about the book are that they chapter on BASIC was surprisingly brief and I would have loved to see more complicated examples. Maybe those things were improved in the 1989 edition.
Despite all of that I was not left with the feeling that it would be fun to revive one of these systems and get to play with it again. We are much better off with SQL and ORMLs and the many other flavors of modern database and development environments. I had hoped that I would see something in PICK that would shed light on how to build developer-friendly systems with modern tools. Instead I'm really glad we've evolved so far past it that it PICK's relevance is mainly historic.
There were some interesting ideas in here, but it was sorely lacking in coherent narrative. Was an editor involved in this project? It seems unlikely given the prose that I could barely follow. I'm surprised that the author is a successful novelist. Based on this experience I won't be trying any of those novels.
Calling this a lesson in economics is blatantly deceptive. This is a polemic against government intervention in the economy. As a student in economics I found the use of this title for something plainly pushing one perspective to be confusing and unhelpful. The only reason it gets two stars is because it is a coherent argument. It is too bad they weren't confidant enough in their argument to have an honest title.