APPropriate Behaviour, the book on things programmers do that aren’t programming, is now complete! The final chapter – a philosophy of software making – has been added, concluding the book.
Just because it’s complete, doesn’t mean it’s finished: as my understanding of what we do develops I’ll probably want to correct things, or add new anecdotes or ideas. Readers of the book automatically get free updates whenever I create them in the future, so I hope that this is a book that grows with us.
As ever, the introduction to the book has instructions on joining the book’s Glassboard to discuss the content or omissions from the content. I look forward to reading what you have to say about the book in the Glassboard.
While the recommended purchase price of APPropriate Behaviour is $20, the minimum price now that it’s complete is just $10. Looking at the prices paid by the 107 readers who bought it while it was still being written, $10 is below the median price (so most people chose to pay more than $10) and the modal price (so the most common price chosen by readers was higher than $10).
A little about writing the book: I had created the outline of the book last Summer, while thinking about the things I believed should’ve been mentioned in Code Complete but were missing. I finally decided that it actually deserved to be written toward the end of the year, and used National Novel Writing Month as an excuse to start on the draft. A sizeable portion of the draft typescript was created in that month; enough to upload to LeanPub and start getting feedback on from early readers. I really appreciate the help and input those early readers, along with other people I’ve talked to the material about, have given both in preparing APPropriate Behaviour and in understanding my career and our industry.
Over the next few months, I tidied up that first draft, added new chapters, and extended the existing material. The end result – the 11th release including that first draft – is 141 pages of reflection over the decade in which I’ve been paid to make software: not a long time, but still nearly 15% of the sector’s total lifespan. I invite you to grab a copy from LeanPub and share in my reflections on that decade, and consider what should happen in the next.
