In Search of Stupidity
Excellent book by Rick Chapman. Fun, witty and so well written that reads better than any detective story. Moreover, reading about other people mistakes makes one feel so clever... I love the feeling :)
As for the practical purposes - well, in the foreword to this book Joel Spolsky says that having at least one programmer in the top management makes the company immune to the serious marketing mistakes (and our management are three natural born programmers, so we have nothing to worry about). But still the recurrence of the silly mistakes is amazing - top software vendors've been committing same sins during 20 years: re-writing software from scratch, selling two products under one name, etc.
Would be great to have a poster with a list of the marketing blunders featured in this book printed out and posted on the wall. Just in case...
Comments
Rewriting software from scratch is as stupid as it is tempting...
Posted by: A Friend | December 13, 2005 6:23 AM
yeap, I thought exactly the same when reading this book (posting all those blunders on the wall)
Posted by: dmitry skavish | December 14, 2005 10:47 AM
yes, unfortunately the poster they provide at http://www.insearchofstupidity.com/Stupid_Poster/stupid_poster.html
won't be a big help.
I'll let you know once we've designed our own version ;))
Posted by: sashka | December 14, 2005 12:23 PM
Hi Sashka
After reading your blog about this book, I bought it and read it and... enjoyed it! Amazing stories ;-) I deeply wish that JetBrains never ends up in such a book!
Posted by: etienne studer | December 28, 2005 8:01 PM