As you may know by now, I’m not a sucker for buzz words. On the contrary, I like facts, logic, and good old thinking. Not some new fashionable buzz word about something that really isn't new or any more exiting than it ever was, just because the right people start blogging about it. AJAX comes to mind here in particular.

Is it just me or does it seem that developers are the only ones not jumping head first on the buzz word hype? Think about it. Developers are the ones implementing the most of the web 2.0 technologies and probably the ones that know most about them, yet they haven’t got much to say about the decisions on where and when to use them. This is unlike any other technology where developers do have the final word and make the decisions on where and when to use it. Granted, a lot of the buzz is about interfaces, which is the designer’s territory, but nevertheless, a technology solely understood and implemented by developers.

Is it an emerging shift in software development life cycle and paradigm or just one developers observation? We have to wait and see...

The product manager at Traceworks and my boss, Morten Wulff, sent me the eBook Getting Real by 37signals on e-mail last friday. I was a little reluctant to read it, because it was written by the guys from 37signals. They have become much hyped amongst the designers at my workplace and the name 37signals is almost a buzz word like web 2.0 and AJAX. It’s not unusual to hear one of the designers use a sentence like “I like that lamp on your desk, it’s very web 2.0”. That’s just wrong :-)

Well, I just finished the book and boy, oh boy, it was really good. I’m sorry I doubted the brilliant guys from 37signals. The book explains to people riding the buzz word hype, why we as developers do why we do certain things. Hopefully, it will have a positive impact on the general understanding of how developers think. That is not what the whole book is about, but it was the theme that it left me with.

There were very few things I didn’t agree with the book about. For instance, I don’t believe that meetings are toxic. I think it's about discipline. A really recommend it for anyone in the sphere of the development of software. From the marketing department, project managers, designers, developers and so on and so forth.

As a developer I have always used the rule of saying no as default when someone asks me if it is possible to add some new feature to our product. The book explains why it is important to do so. I like when someone agrees with me or maybe I agree with the authors, I don’t know.

Conclusion: Read it, it’s good.