What I've Learned From Failure

A quarter-century of experience shipping software, distilled into fixnum bittersweet essays

3266 readers

What I've Learned From Failure cover page

What I've Learned From Failure

100% Happiness guarantee Learn more

Buy Now

Minimum: $15.99

Suggested: $24.99+

Ways to buy

About the Book

Reg "Raganwald" Braithwaite has been working as a professional software developer since 1986, in roles ranging from Sorceror's Apprentice to Vice-President, Development. "What I've Learned From Failure" collects his very best "non-technical" essays on the subject of shipping software into a lean but concentrated book (51 pages).

Manufactured from nearly 100% recycled blog posts. "What I’ve Learned From Failure" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Buy A Bundle, And Save

About the Author

The Leanpub Unconditional, No Risk, 100% Happiness Guarantee

♥♥♥♥♥

Within 45 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks. We process the refunds manually, so they may take a few days to show up. See full terms.

If you buy a Leanpub book you get all the updates to the book for free! All books are available in PDF, EPUB (for iPad) and MOBI (for Kindle). There is no DRM. There is no risk, just guaranteed happiness or your money back.

Table of Contents

  • Preface
    • copyright notice
  • About The Author
    • contact
  • What I’ve Learned From Failure
    • Why does failure matter?
    • The four most important causes of failure
    • People
    • Action
    • Details
    • The Schedule
    • Software
    • Power
    • History
    • Finishing
  • The Not So Big Software Design
    • Lemons
    • Building Better, Not Buzzwordier
    • Where is the client?
    • Better Software Architecture
  • Which Theory Fits the Evidence?
    • why do theory p and theory d matter?
    • belief drives behaviour
    • so which theory fits the evidence?
    • d is for “d’oh! we should have gone with p!”
  • Interlude: The Programmer’s Dilemma
  • Project Management acts like a Marketplace for Information
    • what kind of information sells?
  • Bricks
    • software is not made of bricks
    • assumption: it’s all about moving bricks
    • software development is difficult to parallelize
    • software is transfinite
    • building software without treating it like a pile of bricks
  • Trial-and-error with a feedback cycle
    • trial and error
    • feedback
    • productization
    • the scarce resource
  • Software’s Receding Hairline
    • receding hairlines
    • the tyranny of the urgent
  • Interlude: The Mouse Trap
    • The New Guy
    • Excel, VBA, XML, XSLT, Java!
    • Epilogue
  • Duck Programming
    • prelude: the project
    • what is duck programming?
    • why duck tastes so good
    • dangerous but manageable
    • how to manage duck programming
    • summary
Discuss this book with the author and its 3266 Readers

Last updated

This Book is for Sale Through Leanpub

Authors and publishers use Leanpub to publish amazing in-progress and completed books like this one.

Leanpub_logo_medium

Read

Leanpub has a wide selection of in-progress and completed books available to browse, purchase, and enjoy.

Browse the Bookstore

Write

Leanpub is free for authors and publishers to use. We pay authors or publishers 90% royalties minus 50 cents per sale.

Write a Book