Programming as if People Mattered

Rating:
Summary: politically incorrect and true, thus delightful
Review: Inspiring. Guerrila tactics for programmers who want to care about people yet somehow still get paid to work. On the whole, politically incorrect and true, thus delightful. In places, a touch sour. On my web page at home, the most recent of the three great art-of-programming books I list.

I liked one chapter so much that I typed out a softcopy myself by hand: a copy to read whenever I like. I mean Chapter 20 "The Ivory Tower". That chapter says ... We should reinvent the university experience of programmers to make the experience useful to the programmer. To become the first to teach programming well, let's try applying the approaches used to teach similar disciplines like architecture, or even anthropology, art, and drama.

Rating:
Summary: Dated, but still some good insight
Review: Once upon a time, "Programming as if People Mattered" might be mentioned in the same article as books like "The Design of Everyday Things." Alas, unlike wine, even excellent software design books do not age well.

Whereas "The Design of Everyday Things" has been updated and refined, this book is stuck in 1991. Many of the insights of the book are excellent, but there's a lot of material that is simply no longer relevant. I can only recommend this book to people who are willing to look past the pedantic style, occasional irrelevancies, and evaluations of decade old technology. I'd recommend Alan Cooper's book The Inmates are Running the Asylum instead, though that has its own problems.

If you can look past the obvious defects, there's a lot here for readers interested in user interface design. It's all anecdotal, but it's squares well with other quantitative works.

If you got this far in the review, there's a lot in the book to reward you for looking past the obvious defects. The primary source for Borenstein is his work on Andrew, a large Carnegie-Mellon University project, which, for various reasons, was reduced to a footnote in the history of computing.

One of the most notable observations a reader will make of the book is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Many topics are just as relevant today as they were in 1991. For instance, his discussions on standards still offer insight. Part one starts us off on the basic problems of user interface design, and the chasm between regular users and programmers. Cooper offers a similar analysis, though the tone here is a lot more constructive.

The title of part 2, "The Dark Night of the Soul: The State of the Art in UI design" is a misnomer -- its real focus is the various people involved in UI design, including the HCI folks, programmers, and "the men in suits." Those familiar with the players can skip it. Much of this ground is covered in other books. If you always wondered why you can't get the cool toys from the MIT Media Lab articles, this explains why. The analysis of programmers is similar to Cooper, but with much less inflammatory tone. You can get the analysis of the management role anywhere - though his comments on them in the next section are excellent.

Part three is the meat. Borenstein gives us the benefit of his experience, with his "10 Commandments of user interface design." These are most excellent, and worth the price of admission. There's a few that feel like he might have been grasping a bit to reach the requisite 10, but that's a minor quibble. Most of the advice here is still valid, and you can easily think of modern software that could have benefited from this commentary.

Part 4 is everything else. Mostly, it contains introductory primers on development techniques, usability study, and project planning. Oddly, there's a strong chapter on the fundamental flaws in computer science education (circa 1991) that will ring true for many educated in that period.

I would love to see an updated version of this book. Much of Borenstein's advice still holds true, and a second edition could bring this wisdom to the development community. In the meantime, use the advice of part 3, and program as if people matter.

Rating:
Summary: Dated, but still some good insight
Review: Once upon a time, "Programming as if People Mattered" might be mentioned in the same article as books like "The Design of Everyday Things." Alas, unlike wine, even excellent software design books do not age well.

Whereas "The Design of Everyday Things" has been updated and refined, this book is stuck in 1991. Many of the insights of the book are excellent, but there's a lot of material that is simply no longer relevant. I can only recommend this book to people who are willing to look past the pedantic style, occasional irrelevancies, and evaluations of decade old technology. I'd recommend Alan Cooper's book The Inmates are Running the Asylum instead, though that has its own problems.

If you can look past the obvious defects, there's a lot here for readers interested in user interface design. It's all anecdotal, but it's squares well with other quantitative works.

If you got this far in the review, there's a lot in the book to reward you for looking past the obvious defects. The primary source for Borenstein is his work on Andrew, a large Carnegie-Mellon University project, which, for various reasons, was reduced to a footnote in the history of computing.

One of the most notable observations a reader will make of the book is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Many topics are just as relevant today as they were in 1991. For instance, his discussions on standards still offer insight. Part one starts us off on the basic problems of user interface design, and the chasm between regular users and programmers. Cooper offers a similar analysis, though the tone here is a lot more constructive.

The title of part 2, "The Dark Night of the Soul: The State of the Art in UI design" is a misnomer -- its real focus is the various people involved in UI design, including the HCI folks, programmers, and "the men in suits." Those familiar with the players can skip it. Much of this ground is covered in other books. If you always wondered why you can't get the cool toys from the MIT Media Lab articles, this explains why. The analysis of programmers is similar to Cooper, but with much less inflammatory tone. You can get the analysis of the management role anywhere - though his comments on them in the next section are excellent.

Part three is the meat. Borenstein gives us the benefit of his experience, with his "10 Commandments of user interface design." These are most excellent, and worth the price of admission. There's a few that feel like he might have been grasping a bit to reach the requisite 10, but that's a minor quibble. Most of the advice here is still valid, and you can easily think of modern software that could have benefited from this commentary.

Part 4 is everything else. Mostly, it contains introductory primers on development techniques, usability study, and project planning. Oddly, there's a strong chapter on the fundamental flaws in computer science education (circa 1991) that will ring true for many educated in that period.

I would love to see an updated version of this book. Much of Borenstein's advice still holds true, and a second edition could bring this wisdom to the development community. In the meantime, use the advice of part 3, and program as if people matter.

Rating:
Summary: Hasn't stood the test of time
Review: Published over 10 years ago, this work still has a few interesting tales to tell. Most of the stories and analysis are centered around the Andrew Project, a collaborative effort of IBM and CMU to build a new software and hardware environment for University computing. The project provided an opportunity to perform Human/Computer Interface studies which are discussed throughout.

The book is an interesting look back at history. It has the text from the GNU General Public License from February 1989 and a chapter entitled "Information Wants to be Free." It also show how very lost the computer industry was at that time with regard to computer usability.

There are some war stories here about the cryptic and often dangerous UNIX command line. There are also some rants against the computers of the time (PC MSDOS, Macintosh, etc.) made by folks who made something they thought was better but "weren't getting any respect."

After rereading it recently those few interesting stories were still there but the book's disorganized structure, lack of index, and pedantic style haven't aged well. Those interested in HCI are better advised to read anything by Donald Norman, or any of the other excellent books written recently on HCI or cognative psychology.

Rating:
Summary: Look past the examples for timeless principles
Review: Some of the reviews seem hung up on the "dated" quality of the examples. I think you need to look past this to see the underlying principles. For example, there is a chapter called "The quest for the perfect line editor". The example given is the change from line editors like ed to full screen editors like vi. The underlying principle is difficulty people have in accepting change. Or, the following quote "It may help to think of the user community as being like a preschool full of screaming three-year-olds. One doesn't have to rush to respond every time one of them cries a little bit, as crying is entirely natural for young children. But if some of all of the children begin to wail frequently, something is probably wrong and an investigation is warranted. If what they're all crying is "I want a cookie," that doesn't necessarily mean you should give them all cookies, but you might consider making them a healthy lunch to meet the underlying real need." Excellent advice, and a universal principle, from a chapter called "Listen to your users, but ignore what they say".

Rating:
Summary: Look past the examples for timeless principles
Review: Some of the reviews seem hung up on the "dated" quality of the examples. I think you need to look past this to see the underlying principles. For example, there is a chapter called "The quest for the perfect line editor". The example given is the change from line editors like ed to full screen editors like vi. The underlying principle is difficulty people have in accepting change. Or, the following quote "It may help to think of the user community as being like a preschool full of screaming three-year-olds. One doesn't have to rush to respond every time one of them cries a little bit, as crying is entirely natural for young children. But if some of all of the children begin to wail frequently, something is probably wrong and an investigation is warranted. If what they're all crying is "I want a cookie," that doesn't necessarily mean you should give them all cookies, but you might consider making them a healthy lunch to meet the underlying real need." Excellent advice, and a universal principle, from a chapter called "Listen to your users, but ignore what they say".

Rating:
Summary: It's virtue is its brevity!
Review: Writing a review of this book is not hard; much easier than actually reading the book. On the one hand, there's a pony in here. On the other, you have to dig through a fairly deep pile to find it. My suggestion, if you buy this book, is to go to chapter 17 (p129 of 178) and skim the remainder; while there aren't really any well-stated principles to apply, there's some insight that may prove valuable. Overall, there's enough good stuff to make a decent sized article in InfoWeek; but not a complete book. Digging through the remainder is compounded by the arrogant and condescending style of the author. Most of his experiences are derived from the Andrew project at CMU. One last prejudice of my own: Borenstein's habitual Mac-bashing reveals his own failure to grasp the importance of the events of 1984. As David Nagel once described it, the Mac proved that an easy and powerful user interface is a legitimate use of computing resources. Before that, PARC not withstanding, the cult of programming dictated that knowledge of the sacred vocabulary was a pre-req for using computers. Seems to me that this is a worthy contribution to user centered design; tell me again what we got from Andrew and how many users benefit from them.

Rating:
Summary: It's virtue is its brevity!
Review: Writing a review of this book is not hard; much easier thanactually reading the book. On the one hand, there's a pony in here.On the other, you have to dig through a fairly deep pile to find it. My suggestion, if you buy this book, is to go to chapter 17 (p129 of 178) and skim the remainder; while there aren't really any well-stated principles to apply, there's some insight that may prove valuable. Overall, there's enough good stuff to make a decent sized article in InfoWeek; but not a complete book. Digging through the remainder is compounded by the arrogant and condescending style of the author. Most of his experiences are derived from the Andrew project at CMU.