I’ve been preoccupied with some big projects recently (which, of course, will appear here in some time) but in between renders and downtime, I’ve been reading a bit more. Which made a change considering that easily 90% of everything my eyes consume is via RGB goodness through a screen of sort. So back to basic paper and ink, and the pieces I’m working through at the moment is “Getting Real – The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application” by 37signals.
For those of you who’ve been around the internet for a while will probably have come across the 37signals blog “Signal vs Noise“. For those of you who haven’t, 37signals are the guys behind market leading software packages “Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack & Campfire” and THE go-to guys for studying how to really do business and get away from the problems that cause over-budget/over-deadline issues. The book is basically articles from the SvN blog and you can get it via PDF ($19) or read online (free) as well as the paperback copy but in my effort to prize my face from the glare of a monitor, I went for the book.
The main reason for picking this up, apart from following the SvN blog for a while, is that I’m due to start developing a web application myself and nearly every I spoke with online recommended this book before I start the actual work (read: the stuff that costs money and not just time). I must admit so far, they were all right. This book gives clear, intelligent tips and guides to the process behind making a web app. Not really the technical aspects of it but more notes on how they operate and how you can succeed without hiring hundreds of staff and spending hundreds of thousands of pounds/dollars.
My favourite article so far is summed up nicely – “Build half a product, not a half-assed product” – it’s better to role out a product that works but has scope for adding other features at a later date, than rolling out a product that does everything, but does so badly.
I’ve got a few more books I’ll bung reviews up that I’ve worked through, please let me know below what you guys/girls think.