Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg
Posted on August 26th, 2007
After reading Dreaming in Code, I went back to the reviews on Amazon.com and found agreement with the one from January 20th, 2007 that cried boredom and the one from March 15th, 2007 that upped the ante by saying, "I'll only read the rest of this if I'm in prison."
I skipped more and more as I got closer to the end of the book. The story of the Chandler project starts off well enough but like the project doesn't ever build much momentum. There was a meeting here discussing problem A, another meeting there discussing problem B, and plenty of characters on hand to stir the pot but no immediate consequence beyond... another meeting. Reading about those meetings is only marginally better than being in them when insight into the participants behavior and motive doesn't go deep enough. There's never any rage against the machine. No chairs are thrown. People just go on sabbatical or leave to pursue other projects. So when Rosenberg pauses the Chandler story and drifts into programming history and theories of project management, the interruption is both reprieve and distraction.
As another Amazon.com review mentions, this might be an interesting read if you wanted a slice of day-in-the-life on a software development project. But if that is your life already, you'll need to dig out all the "Ah ha! That's where things went wrong!" moments on your own.