Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A software manager's "must read", January 9, 2001
Journey of the Software Professional is an impressive work. It begins with a Forward by noted author Gerald Weinberg (The Psychology of Computer Programming, etc.) where Weinberg says "In many ways, it opened my eyes. If you are a software professional, I think it will open yours as well." I couldn't have said it better.
This book should be read by software development managers before their first assignments. Hohmann not only provides software engineering guidance and wisdom in real-world context but also, where possible, backs up his thinking with published works, all carefully annotated.
What separates this work from most software engineering texts is Hohmann's ability to keep the work meaningful and relevant to real-world development environments. Many other texts note that most shops are at an SEI Level I maturity yet those same books delve into COCOMO II or McCabe's cyclomatic complexity--concepts and practices foreign in those same shops. It is easy to fill books with details of these and other software engineering tools and techniques but unless these things are placed in a meaningful context, they are simply tools absent of purpose.
What Hohmann offers is much more: a way to think about the real problem to be solved by engineering management: the maturation of the software development department. It is along these lines that Hohmann shines. For example, in one section discussing conflict, Hohmann asks "How much time, if any should be allocated to the schedule to allow programmers to rework their code?" Refactoring (Fowler) is a new spin on how to accomplish this but acknowledging, at a management level, that such activities go on is not widely discussed in most texts. Hohmann challenges readers to think about problems such as these.
Throughout the book are sections entitled "Advice to Managers" and "Advice to Developers". Most of the advice is rock solid and could apply anywhere for the same reason The Mythical Man Month (Brooks) is still relevant and should be required reading by all software managers: software development is (and always has been) about people! While tools and techniques evolve quickly, people have not.
Because every author wants to bring something new and fresh they'll introduce some spin on their particular approach. Hohmann offers SPO: Structure-Process-Outcome to fulfill this pension. While I think it doesn't add much, neither does it detract. There is plenty in this book to let it stand on its own merit.
I didn't agree with everything in this book. There are few books I can give blanket and unreserved approval to, in fact. But this book did do what Weinberg promised in his Forward: it made me THINK. The book's subtitle is "A Sociology of Software Development" and that description fits well. It is not a substitute for a solid book on software engineering techniques. But, I believe this book would greatly supplement anyone's library whose quest is to better understand the discipline.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Plenty of goodies, but also some aridities, June 7, 1999
I found it crowded with good advice and ideas. I also found myself skipping and jumping around in it after a while, and putting it down altogether, because it was getting a bit tedious. But I would leave it lying in a visible place and pick it up again some evenings later. And every time I picked it up I found good and valuable advice in it. There are headings and subheadings on just about every page and the text under them is more or less self-contained: so it's amenable to browsing (chapter 1 excepted). And believe me, it has a huge amount of content. One of the things I like is its stated intention to make you a happier developer, not just a better developer. The causes of developer suffering and confusion are predominantly management and human issues, needless to say, since the machine and machine tools continue to be on their best behavior. The book has helped me avoid some suffering and confusion. It is not B.S.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting perspective., April 3, 2000
By A Customer
This book has an interesting outlook on software development. Beware it is 'the sociology of computer programming' as it says in the title - only read it if this is of interest to you. For this reason it delves into the reasons why people build software the way they do and provides the framework into which all the engineering methods and methodologies fit.However, it's too tedious in places and contains too many hollow platitiudes despite parts being built on what appears to be a sound academically researched foundation. Pick it up if you have room for a book to round out your engineering expertise but don't expect the kind of experience as in reading 'Design Patterns' for the first time, for example.
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