Dynamics of software development

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1. hansmayerMar 2025
   No, please, instead of pointing out everything that is wrong in your reasoning: Please read a referent book about managing software development teams. For example "Peopleware", or "Dynamics of Software Development". Both a bit older, but valuable classics. The second one actually written by a relatively less technical author, a product manager at Microsoft. Maybe then you'll understand a bit more. By the way - I am not the only one complaining about the MBAs. Remember when that plane door fell off? US Congress was holding a hearing about that. And a number of US Congressmen (or were they senators?), people who literally never have the discussions that you and are having, kept asking one simple question: "How come the CEO of Boeing is not an ENGINEER"? It's so natural, that even those disconnected politicians made the obvious connection. Look it up in the archives.
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2. mmhsiehNov 2020
   $10 or so spent on the dynamics of software development by jim mccarthy.
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3. tptacekMay 2020
   Maciej Ceglowski has a good bit in one of his idlewords posts about how the "what makes hackers tick" genre is full of pieces that are really "how to be someone just like the author". There's probably nobody that remark applies to more than ESR, and ESR is probably not someone you'd want to work to resemble more closely.

   So, in reality, if you want to understand your technical cofounders, it is probably not a good idea to take ESR seriously when he says that you should find a "real" Unix (your technical cofounders are, actuarially speaking, almost certainly macOS people), hand-write lots of HTML, or "serve" th "tribal elders of open source". And the idea that "attitude is not a substitute for competence" among hackers is both funny on a variety of levels, and also a singularly bad note for understanding software developers you work with.

   The Mythical Mammoth doesn't have any of these problems, and is a great book, and one worth reading simply so you can have a sense of what building software actually entails (Dynamics of Software Development is another older book that has aged somewhat well --- as have all of Joel Spolsky's posts on Joel on Software; in fact, I'd probably start there). But while this stuff will help you understand the work that's happening on your team, it probably won't do much to help you with the mindset of your team members.

   There probably isn't a substitute for just talking to your cofounders, a lot, and asking lots of questions.

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4. kristopolousJan 2020
   The Analysis of Art by Dewitt Parker. This was referenced in Dynamics of software development by Jim McCarthy. They're both pretty good but the Parker book is kinda rare.

   Propaganda and Information Warfare in the Twenty-First Century by Scot MacDonald, it's purely academic but also a fantastic read. Also academic is Technoscientific Imaginaries: Conversations, Profiles, and Memoirs by George Marcus, also obscure but at least easier to find.

   The 60s-80s books from City Lights are nice when you come across them. Pretty rare though.

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5. mmhsiehDec 2019
   Dynamics of Software Development, by McCarthy.
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6. AlanYxNov 2019
   >In my case, I eventually learned that the odd hours weren't the key to his perceived success. Instead, he used the odd hours to force us to give him only work that could be accomplished alone. We were lulled into letting him make key architecture decisions in isolation, because no one else was awake or online at the same time to discuss them. Eventually he became the architect by virtue of operating in isolation, where we couldn't discuss his decisions.

   McCarthy's 1995 book "Dynamics of Software Development" has a chapter devoted to this phenomenon.

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