August 2008 Entries
In the Affluent Society, Galbraith offers up his view of the world, or rather how he feels the rest of the world views it wrong! He points out that when much of the early economic literature was written, there had begun a fundamental shift in world economics. Up until that time, poverty was the norm... bare sustenance was the primary economic problem to be solved. About the time Adam Smith began observing the pin factory, the world was changing to become what Galbraith calls, an "Affluent Soc
"Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development" is a must read for anyone in the software development field. Whether you are a manager, a developer or a consultant, this book will help you view the profession differently. Scott does an incredible job of being a down-to-earth visionary... someone who can see things clearly from 50,000 feet, but has the technical legs to stand on the ground and look the code in the eye. What follows here does the book no justice
Full disclosure: I am a software developer that is generally a free-market conservative. David Rice writes as though software developers are incompetantly nefarious drolls who have created a market failure that requires heavy government intervention to protect the masses. If that sounds like "over the top" rhetoric, wait until you read his book. Peppering his prose with emotionally charged language like "sad irony", "public ignorance" and "shockingly", and of course his most quoted phrase "six