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Dreaming in Code -- Chapter 1, Doomed


Scott Rosenberg
02.12.2007
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As a registered member of SearchSoftwareQuality.com, you're entitled to a complimentary copy of Chapter 1 of Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software written by Scott Rosenberg and published by Crown Publishing Group.

Dreaming in Code tells the hidden story of the making of software -- specifically Mitch Kapor's Chandler. In "Chapter 1, Doomed," provides a peek into the bug repairs for the Chandler project and how the team handles getting all its work done in the little amount of time left.



Dreaming in Code

Book description:
Our civilization runs on software. Far more than most people understand, it has seeped into every cranny of our lives. It is in our kitchen gadgets and cars, toys and buildings. Our national defense, our businesses and banks, our elections and our news media, our movies and our transportation networks--the stuff of our daily existence hangs from fragile threads of computer code.

And we pay for that fragility. The FBI, the FAA, the IRS -- each has crashed on the rocks as it has tried to build new software systems. The private sector doesn't do much better. Software errors cost the U.S. economy about $59.5 billion annually, according to one study. Never in history have we depended so completely on a product that so few know how to make well. We can't guarantee that we will produce it on time or on budget. We can't guarantee that it will work reliably. We can't even guarantee that it will do what we want it to do. Yet we can't give it up, either: The software that frustrates and hogties us also enthralls us with promises of more, faster, better ways to work and live.

Why can't we build computer programs the way we build bridges? Is this work art or science? Why is the meeting of human mind and machine logic so treacherous? Dreaming in Code seeks to answer those questions. Combining fly-on-the-wall reporting, research, and in-depth explanatory journalism, Dreaming in Code tells the hidden story of the making of software -- specifically Mitch Kapor's Chandler -- its frustrations and intoxications.

>> Read Chapter 1: Doomed.

>> Get more information and buy the book





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