Review: Dreaming in Code
I recently finished Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software by Scott Rosenberg. It covers the development of Chandler, an open source, cross-platform personal information manager (PIM).
A project of the Open Source Applications Foundation and led by Mitch Kapor, Chandler was meant to revolutionize desktop PIM software by eliminating the ’silos’ that separate email messages, contacts, calendar events and to-do tasks and enable peer-to-peer sharing of such information (as opposed to being proprietary and locked-in to a central server, ala MS Outlook and Exchange).
Along the way, Rosenberg delves into the bigger picture of software development by reviewing its history and thought leaders, differing ideas on organization and project management, methods of information sharing and collaboration tools, the open-source and free software movements, contemporary programming languages, modular and object oriented programming concepts, user interface design challenges, coding and quality control issues, and much more.
One of Rosenberg’s main points is that “writing software is hard,” and business leaders, project managers and programmers often make the same universal mistakes in trying to solve numerous recurring problems. The fluid nature of the Chandler project led to turnover in personnel, time constraints, conflicting specs and shifting goalposts. Through compromise and lowered expectations, the early promise of Chandler gave way to a very different product.
Writing a book about a dynamic, no-end-in-sight project posed a problem in the end, and Rosenberg had to wrap up the book before the OSAF team could arrive at a stable, ‘dogfoodable‘ release. Still, his writing is excellent throughout the book as he alternates between the issues of the Chandler project and the larger software industry. It’s to Rosenberg’s credit that he would zoom out right when I was starting to feel bogged-down by Chandler’s constant setbacks. Having read numerous books on computing and design topics, I found plenty of new ideas, undiscovered details and fresh connections throughout Dreaming in Code.
As of this writing, the Chandler project continues to inch toward a stable preview release and its promise of free form personal information management and revolutionary software.
I recently finished Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software by Scott Rosenberg. It covers the development of Chandler, an open source, cross-platform personal information manager (PIM).
A project of the Open Source Applications Foundation and led by Mitch Kapor, Chandler was meant to revolutionize desktop PIM software by eliminating the ’silos’ that separate email messages, contacts, calendar events and to-do tasks and enable peer-to-peer sharing of such information (as opposed to being proprietary and locked-in to a central server, ala MS Outlook and Exchange).
Along the way, Rosenberg delves into the bigger picture of software development by reviewing its history and thought leaders, differing ideas on organization and project management, methods of information sharing and collaboration tools, the open-source and free software movements, contemporary programming languages, modular and object oriented programming concepts, user interface design challenges, coding and quality control issues, and much more.
One of Rosenberg’s main points is that “writing software is hard,” and business leaders, project managers and programmers often make the same universal mistakes in trying to solve numerous recurring problems. The fluid nature of the Chandler project led to turnover in personnel, time constraints, conflicting specs and shifting goalposts. Through compromise and lowered expectations, the early promise of Chandler gave way to a very different product.
Writing a book about a dynamic, no-end-in-sight project posed a problem in the end, and Rosenberg had to wrap up the book before the OSAF team could arrive at a stable, ‘dogfoodable‘ release. Still, his writing is excellent throughout the book as he alternates between the issues of the Chandler project and the larger software industry. It’s to Rosenberg’s credit that he would zoom out right when I was starting to feel bogged-down by Chandler’s constant setbacks. Having read numerous books on computing and design topics, I found plenty of new ideas, undiscovered details and fresh connections throughout Dreaming in Code.
As of this writing, the Chandler project continues to inch toward a stable preview release and its promise of free form personal information management and revolutionary software.