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Roundtable on technical leadership: a SHAPE forum dialog

Roundtable on technical leadership: a SHAPE forum dialog ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes vol 27 no 5 September 2002 Page 106 Roundtable on Technical Leadership - A SHAPE Forum Dialog C a l e n d a r of F u t u r e E v e n t s '. • ;- 2 3 - 2 7 S e p t , A S E - 2 0 0 2 : 17th I n t e r n a t i o n a l C o n f A u t o m a t e d S o f t w a r e E n g i n e e r i n g 2002, E d i n b u r g h , U K . Contact: ase.cs.ucl.ac.uk 29 S e p t - 1 Oct, UbiComp 2002: Fourth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, GSteborg, Sweden. Contact: www.viktoria.se/ubicomp/ 1 Oct, SCAM2002:2002 IEEE Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Montreal, Canada. Contact: www.brunel.ac.uk/csstmmh2/scam2002 2 Oct, WESS'02: 8th IEEE Workshop on Empirical Studies of Software Maintenance, Montreal, Canada. Contact: www.info.uqam.ca/~lounis/wess2002-cfp.htm 3-4 Oct, ISESE: 2002 International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering, Nara, Japan. Contact: torii@is.aist-nara.ac.jp or adw3.aist-nara.ac.jp/index-e.html 3-6 Oct, ICSM2002:2002 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, Montreal, Canada. Contact: www.icsm2002.org :. 6-8 Oct, GPCE'02: ACM SIGPLAN/SIGSOFT Conf on Generative Programming and Component Engineering, Pittsburg, PA. • ;.' SIGSOFT sponsored event; Gerald M. Weinberg, Marie Benesh and James Bullock Roundtable on Technical Leadership - A S H A P E F o r u m Dialog is edited by Gerald M. Weinberg, Marie Benesh and James '---~' SIGSOFT in cooperation event Bullock, and published by Dorset House, 2002 (softcover), 0932633-51-X, 176 pp., $21.95. The best thing I can say about this book is that it is interesting. It is the kind of book that makes a nice airplane read, or good supplemental reading for a course in Software Engineering because it is filled with many "lessons learned" and colorful/witty comments. The title, does not reveal the true contents of this book. Basically this book is an edited digest of several online forum threads (the SHAPE http: llwww, geraldmweinberg, com/shape, html) that focus on two topics: 1) Stupid/Clever Things that Programmers/Designers/Architects do (the first five chapters) and 2) The differences between an expert an guru and what it means to be a Technical Leader (the last five chapters). SHAPE Roundtable F o r u m Dialog, on Technical Leadership A This is a relatively short book; of the 176 pages, there are really only 127 pages (not counting artwork for chapter identifier pages) with actual material on them. My only criticism of the book is the rather uneven background descriptions provided by the individuals who participated in the forum. While sometimes entertaining, they mostly added little to the net value of the book. The first 5 chapters consists of over 50 "Tricks that Ignore Those Who Come After," "Tricks that Destroy Portability," "Stupid Design Tricks," "Stupid Document Tricks," and "Tricks Arising From Social Inadequacy." All-in-all, this is a fun read with forum participants falling on their swords by describing several decisions they made that, at the time, seemed like a good idea, but, as the material clearly illustrates, just as there is a fine line between being a genius and being insane, there is a fine line between being clever and looking stupid. Some of these topics are commons sense (e.g., "Making It Overly Complex", or "Creating Cryptic or Cute Variable Names~'), but are not overly elaborated; other topics are painfully insightful (e.g., "Thinking 'I'll be Gone By Then,'" and "Using Technical Tricks to Avoid Social Situations," or "Mistaking Document for Documentation"). The next 5 chapters deal with the qualities exhibited by technical leaders (e.g., do they do clever things, or just avoid doing stupid things?), once again, taken from the forum's participants lessons learned in the school of hard knocks. In closing, I would recommend th~s book for a light read. I enjoyed it and learned a thing or two. Furthermore, I have used the material, with good results, as part of my companies lunch time seminar series. Reviewed by: Will Tracz . Contact: cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/taha/saig 13-16 Oct, SRDS 2002: 21st Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems, Suita, Japan. Contact: www-ise4.ist.osakau.ac.jp/SRDS2002/index.htm 14-18 Oct, SBES 2002: Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, Gramado, Brazil. Contact: www.sbc.org.br/sbes 15-16 Oct, SREI02: 2nd Symposium on Requirements Engineering for Information Security, Raleigh, NC. Contact: www.sreis.org 23-25 Oct, HASE 2002: 7th IEEE/IEICE International Symposium on High Assurance Systems Engineering, Toyko, Japan. Contact: unicorn.eei.metro-u.ac.jp.hese2002 28-30 Oct, 12ICSQ: 12th International Conference on Software Quality, Ottawa, Canada. Contact: www.icsq.org/12ICSQ.htm 4-6 Nov, SEA 2002: Software Engineering and Applications, Canbridge, MA. Contact: www.iasted.com/conferences/2002/cambridge/sea.htm 4-8 Nov, OOPSLA 2002: 17th ACM Conf on ObjectOriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications, Seattle, WA. Contact: oopsla.acm.org 6-9 Nov, FIE2002: 2002 Frontiers in Education Conference, Boston, MA. IEEE Contact: http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes Association for Computing Machinery

Roundtable on technical leadership: a SHAPE forum dialog

Tracz, Will
ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes , Volume 27 (5) – Sep 1, 2002
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References (9)

Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 by ACM Inc.
ISSN
0163-5948
DOI
10.1145/571681.571695
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Abstract

ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes vol 27 no 5 September 2002 Page 106 Roundtable on Technical Leadership - A SHAPE Forum Dialog C a l e n d a r of F u t u r e E v e n t s '. • ;- 2 3 - 2 7 S e p t , A S E - 2 0 0 2 : 17th I n t e r n a t i o n a l C o n f A u t o m a t e d S o f t w a r e E n g i n e e r i n g 2002, E d i n b u r g h , U K . Contact: ase.cs.ucl.ac.uk 29 S e p t - 1 Oct, UbiComp 2002: Fourth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, GSteborg, Sweden. Contact: www.viktoria.se/ubicomp/ 1 Oct, SCAM2002:2002 IEEE Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Montreal, Canada. Contact: www.brunel.ac.uk/csstmmh2/scam2002 2 Oct, WESS'02: 8th IEEE Workshop on Empirical Studies of Software Maintenance, Montreal, Canada. Contact: www.info.uqam.ca/~lounis/wess2002-cfp.htm 3-4 Oct, ISESE: 2002 International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering, Nara, Japan. Contact: torii@is.aist-nara.ac.jp or adw3.aist-nara.ac.jp/index-e.html 3-6 Oct, ICSM2002:2002 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, Montreal, Canada. Contact: www.icsm2002.org :. 6-8 Oct, GPCE'02: ACM SIGPLAN/SIGSOFT Conf on Generative Programming and Component Engineering, Pittsburg, PA. • ;.' SIGSOFT sponsored event; Gerald M. Weinberg, Marie Benesh and James Bullock Roundtable on Technical Leadership - A S H A P E F o r u m Dialog is edited by Gerald M. Weinberg, Marie Benesh and James '---~' SIGSOFT in cooperation event Bullock, and published by Dorset House, 2002 (softcover), 0932633-51-X, 176 pp., $21.95. The best thing I can say about this book is that it is interesting. It is the kind of book that makes a nice airplane read, or good supplemental reading for a course in Software Engineering because it is filled with many "lessons learned" and colorful/witty comments. The title, does not reveal the true contents of this book. Basically this book is an edited digest of several online forum threads (the SHAPE http: llwww, geraldmweinberg, com/shape, html) that focus on two topics: 1) Stupid/Clever Things that Programmers/Designers/Architects do (the first five chapters) and 2) The differences between an expert an guru and what it means to be a Technical Leader (the last five chapters). SHAPE Roundtable F o r u m Dialog, on Technical Leadership A This is a relatively short book; of the 176 pages, there are really only 127 pages (not counting artwork for chapter identifier pages) with actual material on them. My only criticism of the book is the rather uneven background descriptions provided by the individuals who participated in the forum. While sometimes entertaining, they mostly added little to the net value of the book. The first 5 chapters consists of over 50 "Tricks that Ignore Those Who Come After," "Tricks that Destroy Portability," "Stupid Design Tricks," "Stupid Document Tricks," and "Tricks Arising From Social Inadequacy." All-in-all, this is a fun read with forum participants falling on their swords by describing several decisions they made that, at the time, seemed like a good idea, but, as the material clearly illustrates, just as there is a fine line between being a genius and being insane, there is a fine line between being clever and looking stupid. Some of these topics are commons sense (e.g., "Making It Overly Complex", or "Creating Cryptic or Cute Variable Names~'), but are not overly elaborated; other topics are painfully insightful (e.g., "Thinking 'I'll be Gone By Then,'" and "Using Technical Tricks to Avoid Social Situations," or "Mistaking Document for Documentation"). The next 5 chapters deal with the qualities exhibited by technical leaders (e.g., do they do clever things, or just avoid doing stupid things?), once again, taken from the forum's participants lessons learned in the school of hard knocks. In closing, I would recommend th~s book for a light read. I enjoyed it and learned a thing or two. Furthermore, I have used the material, with good results, as part of my companies lunch time seminar series. Reviewed by: Will Tracz . Contact: cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/taha/saig 13-16 Oct, SRDS 2002: 21st Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems, Suita, Japan. Contact: www-ise4.ist.osakau.ac.jp/SRDS2002/index.htm 14-18 Oct, SBES 2002: Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, Gramado, Brazil. Contact: www.sbc.org.br/sbes 15-16 Oct, SREI02: 2nd Symposium on Requirements Engineering for Information Security, Raleigh, NC. Contact: www.sreis.org 23-25 Oct, HASE 2002: 7th IEEE/IEICE International Symposium on High Assurance Systems Engineering, Toyko, Japan. Contact: unicorn.eei.metro-u.ac.jp.hese2002 28-30 Oct, 12ICSQ: 12th International Conference on Software Quality, Ottawa, Canada. Contact: www.icsq.org/12ICSQ.htm 4-6 Nov, SEA 2002: Software Engineering and Applications, Canbridge, MA. Contact: www.iasted.com/conferences/2002/cambridge/sea.htm 4-8 Nov, OOPSLA 2002: 17th ACM Conf on ObjectOriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications, Seattle, WA. Contact: oopsla.acm.org 6-9 Nov, FIE2002: 2002 Frontiers in Education Conference, Boston, MA. IEEE Contact:

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ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes – Association for Computing Machinery

Published: Sep 1, 2002

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