Re:Books I recommend to my software engineering students
by dpeck on Thursday April 23, 2020 @11:39PM
(#22964399)
I've often had thoughts of opening up a little web shop that anonymously shipped copies of The Mythical Man-Month in bulk.
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Re:Books I recommend to my software engineering students
by no-s on Friday April 24, 2020 @01:22AM
(#22964917)
I used to leave copies of Mythical Man Month on the seats of the MUNI in SF during the DotCom era. Also PeopleWare. Actually Patti Dunn gave me a few hundred extra copies of PeopleWare from some Barclays event I accidentally attended and I couldn't conveniently get them home on my bike, so that was a one-time event.
I so enjoyed the pragmatism of Crockford's "Javascript: the good parts" that I gave it away for a while too.
Sometimes I would print out great tracts like "big ball of mud" and leave them at appropriate places in SF.
Eventually I realized I was either preaching to the converted or preaching to the wilderness. So I stopped. But you've inspired me to reconsider anonymous viral software evangelism, at least for a brief moment.