The Inmates are running the asylum

This book was fairly interesting, and I did enjoy reading it. I have joked around that it's a "novelized resume", but I guess his experience would be with what he himself had accomplished. The dancing bear concept was also pretty cool, but I kept thinking how awesome it would be if combined the power of a bear and the grace of a dancer, what if you could make it good? But enough about that. Some things I'm also glad he talked about is not having software engineers design the interface. I found setting them in an entirely different species semi-offending, but eh. Let them focus their energy on making a product work well with the specifications they are given. Another thing I liked was how deadlines worked for software. In other projects, if something is delayed, you don't just call it done. How would you feel using a bridge that crossed half of a canyon, because they didn't finish the other half because of the deadline. Just taking more time can make a product better. Most of the book that I liked applied to time issues, allowing enough time for design, and not demanding insane work-hours to meet a deadline that was set to early. Parkinson's Law was an interesting concept too. Another good distinction is that of features and tasks. Certainly you need features, otherwise your product doesn't do anything, but that is coming from the wrong perspective. You need to look at it from the point of what I can do with it. Ask not what your software can do for you, but what you can do with it, I guess... we'll think that one over a bit more.