Rating: 
Summary: For those striving for quality and meaning in software
Review: Already owning Code Complete and Rapid Development and finding these two to be excellent practical insights into software development I was excited to get this book into my hands and managed to read it in a day. I wasn't disappointed. In many ways it echoes my feelings on the lack of quality in software development. The code and fix paradigm is endemic in practically all organisations I have worked with and the most don't even recognise that it is a problem - it's just the nature of software. I always counter this, in a constructive way) and I think what Steve presents here provides more good arguments for improving the process of software development. I entirely agree with Steve's arguments regarding the Business case for software quality - it does pay off to plan before construction. Code Reviews don't waste time they save time in the long run. Certainly I see a similar line amongst several key writers like Martin Fowler (Refactoring), Kent Beck (Test Driven Development). The focus on architectural requirements shows this trait as well. The progression to a code of ethics (for example IEEE's Code of Ethics and Professionalism) and licensing will help weed out the dodgy operators in out field that have given it a bad name in the last few years. Organisations and individuals subscribing to this will provide the public the confidence it sees in the Medical and Engineering professions, which earlier in their development had the same problems of software engineering. The SEI CMM enables organisations to assess where they stand in terms of quality and how they can improve to reach greater levels of quality. I agree that we shouldn't get too caught up in the bureaucracy of methods and standards but they provide a guide to improvement. After all the true product of software development is working software.
This book is a good resource to help in achieving improvements in software development.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Diagnosis, Questionable Solution.
Review: As the author of the software's industry's classic tomes, "Code Complete" and "Rapid Development", anything by Steve McConnell is required reading. However, I believe that "Professional Software Development" along with its parent text, "After The Goldrush" is highly unlikely to have the impact of his earlier work. McConnell remains at his best when detailing the problems of the industry and few will argue with his call for the adoption of established best practices and the creation of a better-qualified, structured and more accountable profession. The contentious area is his attempt to base this profession on engineering; a discipline that many feel is not an appropriate metaphor for the distinct and unique task of producing software. Other industry authorities, in particular, Alan Cooper, have eloquently and convincingly denounced this view of software design and construction as engineering, and it seems to lead the author into some increasingly strange territory, for example his bizarre proposal that prospective software practitioners should study traditional engineering topics! In swimming against the tide of movements such as Cooper's Interaction Design, Fowler's Agile Development and Beck's Extreme Programming, I would suggest that McConnell's ideas on creating an engineering-based Profession, are unlikely to see widspread adoption outside of the large-scale developers of in-house, scientific applications. For all this, the book is still an interesting and stimulating read, but I suspect that many are still hoping that McConnell will return to his area of true expertise - the software construction process - and revise Code Complete to incorporate the latest methodologies and environments.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Diagnosis, Questionable Solution.
Review: As the author of the software's industry's classic tomes, "Code Complete" and "Rapid Development", anything by Steve McConnell is required reading. However, I believe that "Professional Software Development" along with its parent text, "After The Goldrush" is highly unlikely to have the impact of his earlier work. McConnell remains at his best when detailing the problems of the industry and few will argue with his call for the adoption of established best practices and the creation of a better-qualified, structured and more accountable profession. The contentious area is his attempt to base this profession on engineering; a discipline that many feel is not an appropriate metaphor for the distinct and unique task of producing software. Other industry authorities, in particular, Alan Cooper, have eloquently and convincingly denounced this view of software design and construction as engineering, and it seems to lead the author into some increasingly strange territory, for example his bizarre proposal that prospective software practitioners should study traditional engineering topics! In swimming against the tide of movements such as Cooper's Interaction Design, Fowler's Agile Development and Beck's Extreme Programming, I would suggest that McConnell's ideas on creating an engineering-based Profession, are unlikely to see widspread adoption outside of the large-scale developers of in-house, scientific applications. For all this, the book is still an interesting and stimulating read, but I suspect that many are still hoping that McConnell will return to his area of true expertise - the software construction process - and revise Code Complete to incorporate the latest methodologies and environments.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Diagnosis, Questionable Solution.
Review: As the author of the software's industry's classic tomes, "Code Complete" and "Rapid Development", anything by Steve McConnell is required reading. However, I believe that "Professional Software Development" along with its parent text, "After The Goldrush" is highly unlikely to have the impact of his earlier work. McConnell remains at his best when detailing the problems of the industry and few will argue with his call for the adoption of established best practices and the creation of a better-qualified, structured and more accountable profession. The contentious area is his attempt to base this profession on engineering; a discipline that many feel is not an appropriate metaphor for the distinct and unique task of producing software. Other industry authorities, in particular, Alan Cooper, have eloquently and convincingly denounced this view of software design and construction as engineering, and it seems to lead the author into some increasingly strange territory, for example his bizarre proposal that prospective software practitioners should study traditional engineering topics! In swimming against the tide of movements such as Cooper's Interaction Design, Fowler's Agile Development and Beck's Extreme Programming, I would suggest that McConnell's ideas on creating an engineering-based Profession, are unlikely to see widspread adoption outside of the large-scale developers of in-house, scientific applications. For all this, the book is still an interesting and stimulating read, but I suspect that many are still hoping that McConnell will return to his area of true expertise - the software construction process - and revise Code Complete to incorporate the latest methodologies and environments.
Rating: 
Summary: Title should be - "Examples of Bad Project Management"
Review: I can sum this book up in two sentences;
1. Think about your application before coding it.
2. Steve wants to be treated like a professional, e.g. Doctor. I was expecting this book to help me do the things the title suggests however all I read where the reasons why projects are poorly managed.
Rating:
Summary: looks like After the Gold Rush
Review: I have read 'After the Gold Rush'. Checking out the index of Professional Software Development: Shorter Schedules, Higher Quality Products, More Successful Projects, Enhanced Careers reminds me very much of that book. I am rather afraid that it is just a second edition of 'After the Gold Rush' which prevented me from buying this one.
Rating:
Summary: Software professionals - READ THIS BOOK!!!
Review: I've been in software development for way too long, but books like this make me glad I'm part of the profession now. Steve McConnell has revised a few chapters in "After the Gold Rush: Toward a Profession of Software Engineering" and added some new essays. The result is even better than ATGR was three years ago when I read it. Steve gave a talk at the SEPG Conference in Seattle and captivated us with a keynote that showed even then that he was ahead of the curve. There are numerous reasons Steve is an editor for IEEE Software, and many of them show here. There are questions about where our profession is going, and quite a few people with differing opinions. No one is talking about what we need to do as clearly as Steve has done in this book. We all need to buy a copy and read it. We should give copies to colleagues and project managers, and start asking what we can do to make things different in the future. Give a copy to the head of the computer science department of your local colleges and universities, and ask when they are starting a software engineering program like the one at RIT. If you live in Texas or Canada, find out about getting your professional license. I work in an organization that was assessed at CMM Level 3 back in December. I work on the SEPG and help us improve the way we do all our work, project management as well as software developmetn. It wasn't until after our assessment was over that I realized much of our software process improvement in the past five years was focused mostly on project management. Knowing this has changed how I approach my job, and brought me back in focus on what I need to working on. Steve's book gave me some great ideas, and I hope to find a way to make many of them happen where I work. You should do the same where you work, whether it is you by yourself or you and 35,000 colleagues all around the world. Change won't happen if we don't do something about this together. This is our future we're talking about, and now we have a few ideas about what we can do to make it different. You need to know. Get this book to find out where to start.
Rating:
Summary: Another Classic by Mr. McConnell
Review: In this single book, Mr. McConnell has managed to summarize all of the arguments for 'building software the right way'. It is non-intuitive to individuals who have little or no training in software engineering, including programmers. When I used to interview VB programmers my first question was always 'Describe the Implements keyword'. For many business people they feel that if you are not coding then you are not making progress, which is just plain wrong if you are in the early stages of a project. This often puts us (as project leaders) in the position of educating the client. This book is incredibly helpful for just such an endeavor. There are so many great points that I have used in helping me overcome the non-intuitive parts of development. The statistics for our industry are abysmal (in terms of budgets over-runs, cancelled projects, etc.). If everyone read this book, and stopped coding for a few hours and actually THOUGHT more about the problem (especially for OO development - doing UML, CRC Cards or SOMETHING) in my opinion (after coding for 20 years - 13 of them professionally) our industry would be in much better shape. Even better would be if you can get your team using design patterns, pair programming (in many cases this is a good idea but not in all), agile development techniques, and other general 'best practices'. I am constantly under pressure to code before it is appropriate to do so. It is hard to explain to a CEO that you need time to do what they believe is 'drawing pretty pictures'. However, reducing dependencies (and when you have them, making them dependent on abstract classes and/or interfaces NOT concrete implementation), not to mention model/view/controller type patterns are the difference between turning on a dime (say adding a web services API in a few weeks) or spending 6 months on a rewrite. I cannot say enough good things about this book. Kind Regards,
Damon Carr, CTO
Monetaire
www.monetaire.com
Rating: 
Summary: It succeeds as a "vision" book
Review: It is clear the author cares very deeply about his profession. He is searching for a way to increase software development professionalism. I did not view this book as a how to cook book. I viewed it as a vision book that offers suggestions on what needs to happen for future software development. Viewed in that light the book succeeds well. Unfortunately some of his analogies to other professions show lack of understanding for those professions, but otherwise the book is good food for thought.
If you are looking for a more concrete books on how to develop software now, he has a good reading list in his book Code Complete, second edition chapter 35. Also check his web site: http://www.construx.com/professionaldev/
Rating:
Summary: What I've Learned Since 1999
Review: Professional Software Development is an updated and significantly expanded edition of my 1999 book, After the Gold Rush. In edition to updating the content end-to-end, this edition contains several new essays: 3 - Cargo Cult Software Engineering
8 - Raising Your Software Consciousness
9 - Building the Community
11 - Programmer Writing
13 - Business Case for Better Software Practices
15 - Quantifying Personnel Factors
16 - Construx's Professional Development Program Since 1999, I've also learned a few lessons that are reflected in this new edition: * Licensing of software developers is more controversial than I expected. I have tried to clarify that licensing is only one of many initiatives needed to improve the software development profession. * The world didn't fall apart on January 1, 2000. Although I didn't think Y2K would be catastrophic, I did believe that Y2K-related problems would be more significant than there were. Beyond that, the Y2K problem itself was in some sense a result of successful software devel-opment practices. Y2K would not have been an issue in the first place if sys-tems had not survived so much longer than their originally expected life-spans. * Modern software development is truly impressive in many respects, and any comments about professionalizing the field of software development should account for software's numerous successes. We must be careful not to throw out the field's better practices as we try to strengthen the weaker ones. The book is organized into four sections. Section 1, "The Software Tar Pit," explains how the software field got to be the way it is. There are many valid reasons why the software field came to its current state. Understanding those reasons should be used to accelerate, not delay, the changes needed to make successful projects an everyday habit. Section 2, "Individual Professionalism," looks at the steps individuals can take on their own to achieve higher levels of software professionalism. Software projects are so complex that numerous key factors cannot be addressed effectively at the individual level. Section 3,"Organizational Professionalism," digs into the organizational practices needed to support more professional software projects. Section 4, "Industry Professionalism," examines steps that must be taken by the software industry at large to support professionalism at both the individual and organizational levels. In short, this book describes the trade of computer programming as it exists today and explores the profession of software engineering as it might exist in the future. The best software organizations control their projects to meet defined quality targets. They accurately predict software delivery dates months or years in advance. They deliver their software projects within budget, and their productivity is constantly improving. Their staff morale is high, and their customers are highly satisfied. It is my hope that this book will be part of a constructive dialog about how to help software development more often reach its full potential. - Steve McConnell
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