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renkeyeson Ask HN: Have you written a book?

I co-authored a chapter in "Beautiful Teams" at the urging of a friend, who was coordinating the project.

Writing a chapter is quite a bit of work, so a book must be quite an undertaking. I feel that it's worth doing, though. Writing anything -- a design spec, an email, a story from your past, etc -- forces you to coalesce and clarify thoughts that have floating around your brain. I gained new perspective on events that I thought I had a complete handle on years earlier.

BT: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596518028

renkeyeson New Book by Fred Brooks - The Design of Design

In case you're curious, the Table of Contents are listed below:

About the Author

Preface

Part I: Models of Designing

Chapter 1. The Design Question

Chapter 2. How Engineers Think of Design -- The Rational Model

Chapter 3. What's Wrong with This Model?

Chapter 4. Requirements, Sin, and Contracts

Chapter 5. What Are Better Design Process Models?

Part II: Collaboration and Telecollaboration

Chapter 6. Collaboration in Design

Chapter 7. Telecollaboration

Part III: Design Perspectives

Chapter 8. Rationalism versus Empiricism in Design

Chapter 9. User Models -- Better Wrong than Vague

Chapter 10. Inches, Ounces, Bits, Dollars -- The Budgeted Resource

Chapter 11. Constraints Are Friends

Chapter 12. Esthetics and Style in Technical Design

Chapter 13. Exemplars in Design

Chapter 14. How Expert Designers Go Wrong

Chapter 15. The Divorce of Design

Chapter 16. Representing Designs' Trajectories and Rationales: In collaboration with Sharif Razzaque

Part IV: A Computer Scientist's Dream System for Designing Houses

Chapter 17. A Computer Scientist's Dream System for Designing Houses -- Mind to Machine

Chapter 18. A Computer Scientist's Dream System for Designing Houses -- Machine to Mind

Part V: Great Designers

Chapter 19. Great Designs Come from Great Designers: Not from Great Design Processes

Chapter 20. Where Do Great Designers Come From?

Part VI: Trips through Design Spaces: Case Studies

Chapter 21. Case Study: Beach House "View/360"

Chapter 22. Case Study: House Wing Addition

Chapter 23. Case Study: Kitchen Remodeling

Chapter 24. Case Study: System/360 Architecture

Chapter 25. Case Study: IBM Operating System/360

Chapter 26. Case Study: Book Design of Computer Architecture: Concepts and Evolution

Chapter 27. Case Study: A Joint Computer Center Organization: Triangle Universities Computation Center

Chapter 28. Recommended Reading

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

renkeyeson Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?

With NUMMI closing down any day now, "The Machine that Changed the World" by Womack, et al (1990) is almost as relevant now as it was then. The book describes the management and product development techniques used in the Japanese-owned auto industry and how they contrast(ed) with those employed by US-owned auto companies. Many of the ideas have been employed in healthcare and software development in the intervening two decades.

I can't speak to the relevance of any specific work of fiction to any HN'er but the one writing this comment, but "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison and "Tender is the Night" by F. Scott Fitzgerald are two novels that stand out to me as being particularly good.

renkeyeson Ask HN: What's the best first business book for a programmer?

I'd recommend "Crossing the Chasm" by Geoffrey A. Moore. It almost perfectly describes the lifecycle and challenges faced by the two software-product-based startups that I've worked for.

renkeyeson Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do?

Agreed, and SharePoint tends to be backed up on the DBMS backup schedule, which is usually more frequent than the file-share/NAS schedule, which is another bonus.

It's the "non-sanctioned" aspect that tends to cause issues down the line, not moving to SharePoint from MS Access. I could've been more clear in that section of my comment.

renkeyeson Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do?

Based on the implementation at my workplace, SP seems to have value as a hybrid intranet site and file share. Each department has their own section in which non-IT folks can create simple HTML content and can attach documents. It is also relatively simple to share this content with other groups as needed, based on membership in Active Directory groups.

More controversially, SP also seems to be replacing MS Access as the non-IT-sanctioned application platform of choice. Instead of creating Access databases on a file share, people use SP "lists" to store data. The controversy stems from the fact that these lists often outgrow the practical limits of SP and need to be migrated to "real" systems.

Many people also seem to want to use SP as a Content Management System or even as the preferred application development platform (in which all application functionality is delivered as SP "web parts", which plug in to SP pages). These uses seem to cause as many problems as they solve, but that's just my opinion.

renkeyeson Ask HN: Reccomend an interesting and fun book to learn electronics.

I just saw this today...it might fit the bill:

"Make: Electronics -- Learning Through Discovery" By Charles Platt; Released: December 2009 (est.) ; http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596153755 "With this practical introductory guide, you'll learn important concepts while you work on real projects."