Rating: 
Summary: Good commentary
Review: This book is one of the best personal commentaries written about the Computer industry as a business and culture that consists of people. Richard Ganriel is best known for his essay "Worse is Better" which is available on the web. "Worse is better" has the Corollary to it that is sometimes more understandable to folks: "if it works then it ain't temporary". This book contains that essay as well as others on Gabriels philosophy on computers, artificial intelligence and other aspects of the field. But the book contains more than just his thoughts and views on the computer field. It also contains a what is calls his "Personal Narrative", an autobiography of himself and how he grew up and why and how he ended as a computer scientist. It also contains the story of the AI startup company he founded in the 1980s Lucid. Lucid, if remembered much today, is because of Lucid Emacs, now XEmacs, which was orginally authored by Jamie Zawinki for Lucid, based on the work of Ricard Stallman and GNU Emacs. Xemacs is the remaining gift that Lucid gave to the computer community. Lucid was a company that pretty much failed, in Gabriels opinion, because of bad management and the "worse is better" hold on the industry, because it had great products that sold. This book, along with the somewhat different "Fire in the Valley" by Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger. Both explain a lot about the computer industry and how it works, and doesn't work. Building a better mousetrap is not a Guarantee of sucess. Highly recommened book.
Rating:
Summary: Good commentary
Review: This book is one of the best personal commentaries written about the Computer industry as a business and culture that consists of people. Richard Ganriel is best known for his essay "Worse is Better" which is available on the web. "Worse is better" has the Corollary to it that is sometimes more understandable to folks: "if it works then it ain't temporary". This book contains that essay as well as others on Gabriels philosophy on computers, artificial intelligence and other aspects of the field. But the book contains more than just his thoughts and views on the computer field. It also contains a what is calls his "Personal Narrative", an autobiography of himself and how he grew up and why and how he ended as a computer scientist. It also contains the story of the AI startup company he founded in the 1980s Lucid. Lucid, if remembered much today, is because of Lucid Emacs, now XEmacs, which was orginally authored by Jamie Zawinki for Lucid, based on the work of Ricard Stallman and GNU Emacs. Xemacs is the remaining gift that Lucid gave to the computer community. Lucid was a company that pretty much failed, in Gabriels opinion, because of bad management and the "worse is better" hold on the industry, because it had great products that sold. This book, along with the somewhat different "Fire in the Valley" by Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger. Both explain a lot about the computer industry and how it works, and doesn't work. Building a better mousetrap is not a Guarantee of sucess. Highly recommened book.
Rating:
Summary: Lisp versus C
Review: This is a hard book to review. I think it's *mainly* an autobiography, but then it's so much more. This man has obviously lived a lot of life and written a lot of software, and has reflected on the lessons that practice has taught. Hence it is that Christopher Alexander's influence lives cheek-by-jowl with stories about graduate school. The "best programming language" war is settled in the same book that reflects on how to write decent prose. Gabriel writes well about the breadth of experience that can be encompassed by an engaged, intelligent, reflective mind. I really enjoyed this book.
Rating:
Summary: Stands still, yet goes everywhere at once.
Review: This is a hard book to review. I think it's *mainly* an autobiography, but then it's so much more. This man has obviously lived a lot of life and written a lot of software, and has reflected on the lessons that practice has taught. Hence it is that Christopher Alexander's influence lives cheek-by-jowl with stories about graduate school. The "best programming language" war is settled in the same book that reflects on how to write decent prose. Gabriel writes well about the breadth of experience that can be encompassed by an engaged, intelligent, reflective mind. I really enjoyed this book.
Rating:
Summary: Software trekkies compile at lightspeed!
Review: You can't begin with the footnotes, looking for crusty anecdotes: the only one merely is an explanation. You can't directly jump to the index either, aiming at your favorite hottest topic, cross jumping from subjects to keywords,
reading paragraphs while thinking you thouroughly read the book: there are only references at the end of the book. And you'd better go through these carefully, to get the taste of what you're about to read: architecture, philosophy,
turkish carpets, epistemology, greek wars, biology, style and... management, software engineering and programming languages.
Indeed, you may think that a book whose title targets one of the hottest topics in software engineering (one topic eligible for an appearance in the well-known "wired" column --- although it hasn't yet, controversially aligned with something you'd better be "tired" of) should go into the details of the programming and software tricks you need to boost your own project. Well, Richard Gabriel's opus does not. Navigating freely through the essays, you eventually realize Gabriel has a more ambitious vision than teaching his lattest hacking techniques: bridging architecture and software. That is, art and science.
Indeed, when stuck with problems in your own field, why not try to learn from other fields? And, in particular, why not try to learn when the words, the processes, the results (and even the failures) so closely echo with those you experience in your day-to-day activity?
To achieve such a difficult goal, Gabriel's "Patterns of Software" takes you by the hand, stepping the assembly language of architecture to shed light on that of software. Looking for the realm of beautiful software in the land of
beautiful buildings, Gabriel decompiles the work of the architect Christopher Alexander who devoted his life to the realization of beautiful buildings. Gabriel imports architectural notions and concepts (habitability,
piecemeal growth, patterns), aiming at a suitable instantiation that would make sotware beautiful as well. Gabriel even finds materials to talk about architectural bugs and spends an essay (titled "the failure of pattern
languages") debugging.
And in a last reflexive effort, Gabriel decompiles himself, his life, and the company he funded and which later failed, Lucid Inc.
But does Gabriel's bridging succeed? You'll wish to end up your journey with the foreword written by Christopher Alexander himself, to agree that the question remains... And that it is not the point.
This book is a pioneering brand: neither success nor failure, simply the user guide to go where no programmer has gone before.
The reading-risk is to become a software-trekkie.
Interested?
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