Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

McConnell's book Code Complete proclaims itself to be "...a practical handbook of software
construction". It proved to be an immensely readable compendium of wisdom about the art of
programming (for it is an art, not a science). Every serious programmer should read this one. It
concentrates on the procedural languages and the procedural approach to program design and
construction, but even you object oriented people will benefit from reading it (your classes all have
procedural interiors and their instantiations are controlled externally from within procedural structures.
Yes they are -- don't argue!).
Over the years, through very many very painful lessons learned as my programs crumbled around me
and exhibited some unsuspected flaw, I have started to grope my way towards my own philosophy of
program design. I have approaches and techniques that I use because (pragmatically) I have found that
they work. I was pleased to find that many of these painfully acquired ideas corresponded very closely
with the ideas developed in this book (everyone likes to have their prejudices confirmed, don't they?).
However I had never really formulated my half-thought-out ideas with the clarity that Steve McConnell
has demonstrated in his book, and neither had I realised the implications of what I was doing. I read this
book in a state of acute intellectual excitement. I learned something new, useful and wholly wonderful in
virtually every chapter. The book has classic written all over it. I was a good programmer before I read it;
I am a better one now.
Edward Yourdon's Death March is a discussion of the type of computer project with which many of us
are all too familiar. The under-funded, under-staffed project with such ridiculous specifications and
lunatic deadlines that it is doomed to fail before it even starts. Everyone is expected to work (it
sometimes seems) twenty four hours a day, seven days a week and still there is no chance of bringing
this behemoth in on time and/or on budget. And association with the failure will look bad on your CV.
Yourdon discusses just why these projects exist at all, why they are so common (they are almost the
norm in the industry), how to avoid working on them and what to do if you ever find yourself on one.
He talks about politics and about money, about personalities and about business realities. There are
many amusing anecdotes about real death march projects that Yourdon and his friends have worked
on.
And most unusually for an Edward Yourdon book, it doesn't turn half way through into a diatribe about
how wonderful CASE tools are (I sometimes get the impression that Yourdon thinks that CASE is the
cure for world hunger, poverty, AIDS, athletes foot and halitosis as well as helping a little with mundane
things like designing computer systems). Consequently the book remains consistently enjoyable,
amusing and informative right to the very end. If you ever have been, are currently or are about to be
involved in a death march project, this is the book for you.
I have never made any secret of my love for the novels of Sir Henry Rider Haggard and over the years I
have managed to amass a fair few of them. Some, however have managed to elude me. Recently a
friend filled one of the gaps on my bookshelf by finding me a copy of Cleopatra; a novel I last read at
about age fourteen and which I haven't seen anywhere since. I devoured it luxuriously. Oh the high
flown, heavily archaic language, the dire warnings, the dooms foretold and dooms withheld, the
machinations of the gods and the love and the passion that seeks to defy death itself. All of this woven
around the historically accurate (and very familiar) story of Cleopatra herself. Nobody could do this like
Haggard; and his magic spell is as potent now as ever it was. I love it.
The late John Brunner had no illusions about his own writing. He knew what was good and what was
merely make-work and he was never afraid to blow his own trumpet, usually (it must be admitted) with
very good reason for many of his books were undeniably brilliant. Over a period of several years, at
many British SF conventions I heard him talk about a massive work in progress of which he was
inordinately proud. It was called (he told us) The Great Steamboat Race and it was a historical novel
set in nineteenth century New Orleans. It was about the sprawling, brawling city itself, the times, the
politics, the business, the haunting Mississippi river, the boats that sailed upon it and the people who
crewed them. It was a huge novel, a definitive novel, his masterwork.