New: Book Report: The Psychology of Computer Programming

How to get programmers to get along together. Attempts to use psychology to design easier-to-use computer language features. Discussion of which is better for your organization's culture: batch processing of punch cards or time-sharing. Ahem, yes, that's right, I said "punch cards or time-sharing." This book is from 1971. Wow, that's even older than Peopleware. So it's interesting, but in sorta the same way as when you're reading Knuth and you're thinking "Wow, this book is so influential, I'm gonna learn a lot and--wha hey why is he talking about this weird non-Intel architecture OMG did people really argue about what the correct size for a byte is, I mean, c'mon?!?" Apparently, time-sharing was a not-unmixed blessing. If you get a bunch of geeks waiting in line to turn in their punch cards, sometimes they talk about useful stuff.

Labels: , ,

Posted 2009-01-22