The Soul Of a New Machine
a Pulitzer prize winning book (1985) by Tracy Kidder on how a small company and a small team made it big in building computers..............
some notes scribbled down hurriedly while reading the book.......
"Mushroom theory of management" ??
Put them in the dark, feed them shit and watch them grow !!!
not everything worth doing is worth doing well...meaning...if you can do a quick-and-dirty job, and it works, do it.
in computer making industry, there is no such thing as a perfect design. this lesson is the first step in learning how to get the machines out the door. an engineer should know when to stop
striving for perfection.
about engineers in page 146:
engineers do have a professional code;among its tenets is the general idea that the engineer's right environment is a highly structured one, in which only right and wrong answers exist. its a binary world; the computer might be its paradigm. and many engineers aspire to be binary people within it. no wonder. the prospect is alluring. it doesn't matter if you are ugly or graceless or even half crazy; if you produce right results in this world, your colleagues must accept you. it's an exciting environment to contemplate; you can change the way people think if you can provide the right reason, and you can predict the way in which others may change you. since there are only right or wrong answers to questions, technical disputes among engineers must always have resolutions. it follows that no enmity should proceed from a dispute among engineers.
ooh, that was well said. kidder's excellence in writing is remarkably obvious from these words. it couldn't have been written any better. one observes these things around them at workplace daily but its tough to write them down with correct words, more so when it is about a technical or engineering environment. very few have the talent with words to express any idea or thought. kidder surely has one.
why an engineer happened to like the heroin of a particular movie?
"she is romantic, foolish, unrealistic- everything an engineer's not supposed to be".
boy, that makes me rethink my choice of this profession!!!!
some notes scribbled down hurriedly while reading the book.......
"Mushroom theory of management" ??
Put them in the dark, feed them shit and watch them grow !!!
not everything worth doing is worth doing well...meaning...if you can do a quick-and-dirty job, and it works, do it.
in computer making industry, there is no such thing as a perfect design. this lesson is the first step in learning how to get the machines out the door. an engineer should know when to stop
striving for perfection.
about engineers in page 146:
engineers do have a professional code;among its tenets is the general idea that the engineer's right environment is a highly structured one, in which only right and wrong answers exist. its a binary world; the computer might be its paradigm. and many engineers aspire to be binary people within it. no wonder. the prospect is alluring. it doesn't matter if you are ugly or graceless or even half crazy; if you produce right results in this world, your colleagues must accept you. it's an exciting environment to contemplate; you can change the way people think if you can provide the right reason, and you can predict the way in which others may change you. since there are only right or wrong answers to questions, technical disputes among engineers must always have resolutions. it follows that no enmity should proceed from a dispute among engineers.
ooh, that was well said. kidder's excellence in writing is remarkably obvious from these words. it couldn't have been written any better. one observes these things around them at workplace daily but its tough to write them down with correct words, more so when it is about a technical or engineering environment. very few have the talent with words to express any idea or thought. kidder surely has one.
why an engineer happened to like the heroin of a particular movie?
"she is romantic, foolish, unrealistic- everything an engineer's not supposed to be".
boy, that makes me rethink my choice of this profession!!!!
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