Participants of the SHAPE forum, many of them software consultants and managers at the world's most successful software companies, logged in to help each other identify the "stupid tricks" that developers are tempted to employ in design, code, and documentation—tricks that seem clever in the short term but have damaging long-term effects.
Topics include programming, design, documentation, teaching, learning, educating management, being yourself, and much more.
The chapter titles are descriptive content headers and they are as follows:
1) Tricks That Ignore Those Who Come After.
2) Tricks That Destroy Portability.
3) Stupid Design Tricks.
4) Stupid Design Document Tricks.
5) Tricks Arising From Social Inadequacy.
6) Experts And Gurus As Leaders.
7) The Leader As Learner.
8) The Expert As Teacher.
9) The Courage To Teach In Any Direction.
10) The Courage To Be Yourself.
Presented in an easy-to-read dialogue format, true to the comments' original appearance on the Web, this is the second stand-alone book drawn from Weinberg's SHAPE forum, following Roundtable on Project Management.
Contributors include Jim Batterson, James Bullock, Pat Ferdinandi, Fritz, Phil Fuhrer, Jesse Gordon, Don Gray, Brian Gulino, Peter Harris, Joseph Howard, Kevin Huigens, Steve Jackson, James Jarrett, Bob King, Dave Kleist, Henry Knapp, Brian Knopp, Fredric Laurentine, Pat McGee, Nate McNamara, George Olsen, Mark Passolt, Sue Petersen, Dwayne Phillips, Brian Richter, Sharon Marsh Roberts, Brett Schuchert, Stuart Scott, Dave Smith, Steve Smith, Daniel Starr, Wayne Strider, Pete TerMaat, Phil Trice, Bill Trierweiler, Marianne Tromp, Jerry Weinberg, and Kay Wise.
Charles Ashbacher put it this way: "The advice in the book is some of the best that I have ever read. There is none of the egotistical posturing that pervades so many of the online forums, the contributors are genuinely humble and realistic. I found them refreshing, entertaining and likable."
