Book Review: Getting Real

Normally, I include a thumbnail of the book cover, but Getting Real by 37signals doesn’t have one. So far it exists only as a PDF and costs $19 a pop.

Getting Real is a collection of essays. If you follow the Less Code and Loud Thinking blogs, a lot of it will be old hat to you. Ditto for advocates of Extreme Programming (XP). You might find some of the presented ideas too extreme for your liking. If you’ve been an XP practitioner, you’ll feel right at home. If XP is new to you, it’s time to get your feet wet.

I am convinced this book will be quite an eye opener to many ASP.NET developers. I believe the ASP.NET culture is built around complexity which is the exact opposite of what the 37signals folks advocate. It has become almost customary to write thicker and thicker books on ASP.NET; make coding more and more sophisticated; learn more and more hacks and tricks from endless (and I mean endless) how-tos and tutorials. Design and architecture should never be overlooked, but it makes a huge difference to what extent you go with that.

This is in stark contrast to the idea of writing less code; developing fewer features; wasting less time on the fantasies of “functional specs”; improving code in small increments and shipping more often. It is difficult to argue with Warren Buffett’s words, There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult. I have no idea why we have our culture upside down.

Overall I really enjoyed this collection of essays and therefore highly recommend it.

Would love to hear your opinion of this book.

I (currently) develop in ASP.NET at my workplace, but have been using Ruby on Rails for my own projects - and the difference between the two is often frustrating. I found the complexity in ASP.NET that you refer to becomes a lot more obvious after using Rails.

I've even created my own server controls that emulate some of RoR's ActionView helpers - particularly the automatic mapping to objects and get/post values.

In regards to Getting Real, I've not read it yet, but looking forward to going through it when I find time.

Milan, As someone developing a software product "on the side" this book appealed to me. Not only did I read the book but had the opportunity to hear Jason talk about this topic at the South By Southwest (SxSW) conference in Austin. So it's encouraging for someone to say (in essence) "Don't quit your day job."

I don't think I agree with everything in the book, however, I don't think they expect any one to agree with 100% of what they wrote or that 100% of what is in the book applies to everyone. Still there were concepts put forth that go against conventional practices that are worth reexamining.

For instance the myth of functional specs. The book exposes functional specifications for what they truly are: innefective time wasters. The book suggests that rather than functional specs that try to define capabilities and interfaces in mind-numbing detail, document the user interface instead. This way everyone is talking about something that is "real."

One concept I don't agree with completely is the concept of "Don't outdo your competition, underdo your competition; don't offer more features, offer fewer features. They go on with this and offer their take on how additional features cause additional complexity so the key is to provide fewer and fewer features in order to make the product simpler and simpler to use -- which is true to a point -- but as Jim Coudal pointed out during the SxSW keynote "I think Jason is working on a business plan for a product whereby people pay him for a product that does nothing" (my paraphrase of Jim's comment from memory.)

I think there are times where adding a feature as a product differentiator helps -- as long as it doesn't come with a lot of complexity and the baggage that complexity drags along.

I do recommend the book. The Vine Type featureset will definitely be adjusted as a result of this book and other SxSW presentations.

Carl, speaking of "underdoing" your competition: I think you have a huge advantage with Vine Type over larger, more "established" blogging engines. It has a more robust feature set; a cleaner UI that does less, not more (which is good); a smaller footprint, etc. You get my drift...

If I were to choose a blogging engine for another site, I think I'd pick Vine Type. Other blogging engines overwhelm me with a myriad of options, settings and features.

Thanks, Milan. It's great to get positive feedback from someone who is as well-versed in the arena Vine Type operates. 37Signals suggests that I (as creator of Vine Type) post a Manifesto that (a) announces to the world in a series of "I Believe..." statements what the product is all about and what it is not and (b) helps to guide decisions when feature requests pop up. I think that's a great idea and I'm going to put forth some effort over the next few weeks to come up with something worth posting and guiding development.

I purchased this book as soon as I read your recommendation of it. I enjoy books where information is presented in bite-sized pieces, and Getting Real is definitely a joy to read. For whatever it is worth, I have added my own blog entry regarding the book: http://somenewkid.blogspot.com/2006/03/when-student-is-ready.html

Thank you for letting me know of this book. I hope I gave you sufficient credit in my blog.