Robby on Rails: Tag books

Don't Over Promise

Robby Russell — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 21:02:00 -0600

This was from a discussion a few weeks ago on the Dialogue-Driven Development mailing list.

Bob listed five things that promotes dialogue.

Active Listening
Agenda Control
Trust
Follow-Up/Follow-Through
Don’t Over Promise

“Don’t Over Promise; In business, it seems about half wait until the last minute and the other half hasn’t a clue about what’s really involved in making any sort of quality effort at something (look at the dismal record on software project performance in the CHAOS report and others). If you overpromise/underdeliver against expectations; you’ll damage both trust and future dialogue. Don’t commit to situations where there’s any doubt in your mind regarding your ability to perform. It doesn’t matter as much about capability (since we all like the challenge) as much as it does about raw capacity (in terms of time) to perform within the established timeframe.”

The list has been about as dormant as my blog has the past several weeks. I’m currently reading through King Arthur’s Round Table, by David Perkins, which focuses on different conversation styles and Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together, by William Isaacs. I hope to share some of what I learn on my blog and with the list. :-)

Knowing Me, Knowing You, part 2

Robby Russell — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 20:16:00 -0500

Earlier this month, I posted the first in the series of Knowing Me, Knowing You. In this second post, I would like to take you inside the PLANET ARGON office. More specifically… I would like to list all the books that I found on peoples desks. These aren’t books that are sitting on the bookshelves… but books that are sitting within arms reach of the employees at PLANET ARGON.

Here goes with some links to our favorite Independent bookstore, Powells.

About Face 2.0, by Alan Cooper
Activity-Centered Design, by Geri Gay
Another Roadside Attraction, by Tom Robbins
DNS & Bind Cookbook, by Cricket Liu
Mastering the Requirements Process, Suzanne Robertson
Mind Hacks, by Tom Stafford
New Utopians a Study of System Design, by Robert Boguslaw
Pragmatic Version Control: Using Subversion, by Mike Mason
Practices of an Agile Developer, by Venkat Subramaniam and Andy Hunt
Programming Ruby, by Dave Thomas
Rails Recipes , by Chad Fowler
RT Essentials, by Jesse Vincent
Thoughtful Interaction Design, by Jonas Lowgren

Care to take a guess at who is reading what?

Your Turn

Take a look around your workspace... which books are within arms reach. Right now. :-)

Go Ruby Go!

Robby Russell — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 19:14:00 -0500

Allison Beckwith forwarded me an email that she got from Powells.com (our favorite independent bookstore)... check out their top technical books right now!

TECH BESTSELLERS

“The Ruby Cookbook” by Lucas Carlson (Computer Languages)
“Agile Web Development with Rails” by Dave Thomas (Computer Languages)
“Ubuntu Hacks” by Jonathan Oxer (Unix)
“Programming Ruby” by Dave Thomas (Computer Languages)
“Rails Recipes” by Chad Fowler (Computer Languages)
“Perl Hacks” by chromatic (Computer Languages)
“Higher-Order Perl” by Mark Jason Dominus (Computer Languages)
“Mind Performance Hacks” by Ron Hale-Evans (Popular Science)
“Mind Hacks” by Tom Stafford (Popular Science)
“Ajax Design Patterns” by Michael Mahemoff (Internet)

This includes both online and in-store purchases. We’re lucky at PLANET ARGON as we’re only about 4 blocks from their technical book store. ;-)

You’ll also notice that the Ruby books are selling more than the Perl books… Tim O’Reilly “blogged about this the other day.

Congrats on hitting #1 Lucas!

mental note: ...better hurry and finish my book!

Code Complete

Robby Russell — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 11:11:00 -0500

I came across a review of Code Complete, 2nd Ed. last night… and saw the following quotes.

””People have already made all the mistakes that you’re making now, and unless you’re a glutton for punishment, you’ll prefer reading their books and avoiding their mistakes to inventing new versions of old problems.” “

...and

””Once a programmer realizes that programming principles transcend the syntax of any specific language, the doors swing open to knowledge that truly makes a difference in quality and productivity.”“

I’m sold and with 900+ pages… I’m sure I have a few things to learn. I’m going to go pick it up shortly at Powell’s Technical. :-)

Go Ruby Go!

Robby Russell — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 19:52:00 -0600

DHH wrote that Tim O’Reilly wrote on O’Reilly Radar, Ruby Book Sales Surpass Python.

While I was looking at the data, though, I noticed something perhaps more newsworthy: in the same period, Ruby book sales surpassed Python book sales for the first time. Python is up 20% vs. the same period last year, but Ruby is up 1552%! (Perl is down 3%.)

...awesome!