I’ve just finished re-reading Scott Rosenberg’s wonderful book Dreaming in Code, detailing the apparent disaster that unfolded at the Open Source Applications Foundation when they were building Chandler.
It reminded me of how good is to read about the how and what of our role as technology professionals, so I thought I would post some of my favourite technology books. If you haven’t read any of the following then I recommend that you do.
Dreaming in Code
Chandler was one of those projects that everyone dreams of working on. Total blue sky development, plenty of funding, no fixed deadlines and a great team. As an outsider to the project Scott Rosenberg’s telling of the story is a great read with lots of reflections on the industry as a whole interspersed to really make you think.
If you don’t find yourself shouting “Don’t do that!” at the protagonists a few times then you’ve not worked on enough projects (or have been lucky enough to only work on good ones!).
The Soul of a New Machine
Tracy Kidders Pulitzer winning book follows the project at Data General to build a 32-bit Mini Computer called the MV/8000. It show the incredible dynamic of building a team who cast themselves as against the world. Another team in the same company is working on a project which rings like the Chandler team (too much time/money/over-ambition) and a group of mostly young graduates are fighting to prove they can build something better. Really gripping.
Microserfs
Ok, this book isn’t a pure technology type book but it is the one that made me want to be a programmer. It follows the adventures of some ex-Microsoft programmers who start a games company. It really gives you a feel of what working at a startup can be like (my career has been startups pretty much all the way). Douglas Coupland spent a good amount of time hanging out with programmers before writing this and it shows.
Founders at Work
This is a collection of interviews with technology founders from a very wide span of time, from proper old skool (Steve Wozniak) to some of the Web 2.0 darlings. A few years old so there’s no Zuckerberg or Biz Stone but so filled with truisms about being in early stage companies it is a must-read.
There is a companion book Coders at Work which I’m not so fond of. I think it shows that I’m not a true programmer at heart. Don’t tell anyone (although my team knows already I think).
Joel on Software
I’ve been a big fan of Joel since the early days of his blog JoelOnSoftware. His musings on both the building of software and the work culture that comes with it is invaluable in understanding our discipline. You can read all his articles online but the book is still recommended.
Hackers and Painters
As with Joel this is another collection of online posts, this time from Paul Graham, one of the founders of ViaWeb (which later became Yahoo! Stores). I don’t agree with everything he says (especially when it comes to Lisp vs every other language ever invented) but he really does know what he’s talking about. I’m a big believer in development as craft and through experience have become pretty anti-corporate. This is a point of view very much espoused by Paul and his book will definitely make you think.
Don’t make me think
I haven’t actually read this but our primary web developer Chris says it’s really good. Chris also likes scandinavian metal though so…
The Mythical Man Month
Ok, I’ll be honest. I haven’t read this. But it is quoted so often I fell like I’ve assimilated the main premise of the book anyway. Adding programmers to a late project makes it later. And you can’t make a baby in a month if you use 9 women. Something like that. Please feel free to throw mud in my direction if I’ve missed the point and I promise I’ll get a copy and read it.
Release 31 is now live and I wanted to share with everyone some of the exciting new features we’ve added to the site this week.
Chains
We’ve displayed when one of the nearly 4,000 spas and salons on the site is part of a larger chain for a while now. What we haven’t done is group those venues together in a meaningful way.
In the latest release we’ve created pages dedicated to each chain in our database. On this page we show similar content for a spa or salon but pulled from all of the chain locations. This gives an easy way of seeing where all of the locations are, especially useful if you’ve purchased one of our exclusive deals which is applicable at all of then (like the ever popular Enlighten Body Detox Package at Dove Spa). You can also see the best deals across the chain and reviews submitted by the Wahanda community.
Deals Wishlisting
We added a new type of wishlist item: Deals/Offers.
You can now with one click add a deal or offer to your scrapbook. This makes it extra easy to let people know what they should be buying you for your birthday, for christmas or just because you’re had a hard week/day/hour.
If anyone is feeling generous I'd love this as a present!
The last month has been a bit of a slog for the development team here at Wahanda. If you’re been following you will have noticed the gap in release posts is longer than one would expect from a team that prides itself on a fortnightly development schedule.
Release 26 (released on April 22nd) was a big release for us but didn’t really deliver that much functionality onto the site. Lots of back end reworking and the like. As there wasn’t that much to say I thought I’d save myself for this iteration, where we have something to really get excited about!
Release 27 was about one thing and one thing only. Venue details. The original page for venues hadn’t changed too much since we went live over a year ago and over that time the layout / design hasn’t really kept up with the amount of additional content we have. As a result we went back to basics and rebuilt the page from the ground up. We hope you like the result.
Here are some of the highlights:
Overview
The goal with the overview is to create a hub for all the content linked to the venue. This is usually in the form of a snippet (e.g. descriptions) or a selected item from a bigger list (e.g. reviews, fans).
We’re hoping this model will last us a while as we add more and more community features.
Description
On the previous version of the page we had the full description on the overview. As part of making the overview we’ve given the description it’s own tab. We’ve also moved some other elements that didn’t seem to fit anywhere else onto this tab, like facilities and amenities. We’re going to be doing some more work in this area over the next few months I think.
Menu / Deals
Along with the overview this is the tab that’s received the most attention. We’ve merged the old deals and menu tabs and dropped the simple treatment list for venues where we have a full menu.
We still use the basic treatment list when we don’t have a menu so if you want to really make your venue page shine get in touch and we’ll sort out a full menu for you.
Gallery
The gallery has also had a bit of a makeover. The biggest difference being that we now show full-size images. This does unfortunately mean that when we haven’t been given top-quality images the gallery is lacking.
Ok. Back to work for me. We’re working really hard throughout May to build an extranet system that will allow all our suppliers to manage their details directly. Watch this space.
Another 2 weeks has passed and we have yet another release coded up and live for everyone to play with.
We’ve been focusing a lot on the back-end of the system recently so don’t have a whole lot of public functionality to shout about.
Multi-Venue Products
One of our most visited pages is the main product information page. Something our suppliers have been asking for lately is the ability to see all of their venues which accept a given product. This is especially relevant for someone like Dove who currently have 27 spas spread across the u.k. with a product range that is common to all. It’s certainly more compelling to know that you have options when buying one of these vouchers.
With the new product page you can easily see all of the venues which accept the product, both plotted on a map and as a simple list.
Product - Redeemable Venues
Coming soon we’ll be offering “Chain” pages which enable the showcasing of the brand in a single consolidated place.
Product Map Counters
It’s really only a little thing but as everyone has said how useful the custom map of the u.k. is on the main deals page we thought we’d add a little extra something to make it even better.
Now you can see how many deals are available in each region without having to click through to the listing page!
Wahanda Deals Map - Counters
Anonymous Reviews
Something we wanted from the very beginning of the site was to offer consumers a way of providing reviews without having to give up their identity. This could be for regular customers who have had a bad experience or for someone having a treatment they would rather not advertise to the whole community. Unfortunately this has back-fired a little (pun not intended) and the number of people posting anonymously has been disproportionately high.
As a result we’ve changed the submission process so that only profile of level 2 or above can use the anonymous feature. This should prevent some of the issues we’ve had with bad reviews while still enabling our regular contributors to make use of this option.
Getting yourself to a level 2 is pretty easy.
Check out the ‘More about Points’ page for details.