4 ms·

As long as we are calling BS (the article refers to this term), I call BS on the article's claim that "Making Software", released only two months ago in October

by bugsy 16y ago

As long as we are calling BS (the article refers to this term), I call BS on the article's claim that "Making Software", released only two months ago in October 2010, and with very few reviews, is one of three books essential to read along with Peopleware and The Mythical Man Month. The latter two though have proven themselves over decades. It has the smell of stealth advertising. I must ask: Is there some sort of familial, professional or financial connection between the author of the article and one of the three dozen contributors to that new release? Or perhaps to the publisher? Or is it just the affiliate links he provides that provide the explanation?

raganwald 16y ago
Accusing me of having a financial interest in the book other than an affiliate link is called "Playing the man and not the ball." The relationship between the speaker and the statement has no bearing on the truth of the statement. Having "proven themselves through the decades" is an appeal to popularity. What, specifically, about them makes them good? What about "Making Software" makes it bad? Thinking of things as being good strictly because people keep recommending them or because you trust the person recommending them without examining the statements critically is fine. Go your own way. But interestingly, it is exactly the behaviour that the post calls out. It's like saying that Java is good and Haskell is bad because Java has "proven itself" in industry through the decades. Or complaining that a Haskell user praising Haskell can't be trusted because it's in his interest for the language to become more popular. p.s. The OP says the following: "There are at least three decent books on the subject." Is the word "decent" synonymous with "essential?"
- feral 16y ago
  Your response would have been a lot stronger if you had answered his main question - do you have an interest? This is a question it is reasonable to ask any blogger endorsing a product. It is also a question any blogger should clearly and explicitly answer, if asked. >The relationship between the speaker and the statement has no bearing on the truth of the statement. It has no bearing on the objective truth of the statement. However, we have no Oracle we can check for objective truths. So with incomplete information, we reason subjectively and probabilistically. Books that stand the test of time, and are still popular in our community, are more likely to be good than an arbitrary new unknown book. We apply a different prior, and there's nothing wrong with that. P(Book_good|classicInCommunity) > P(Book_good) When we see three books endorsed, two respected classics, and one new to the market, its natural to wonder whether there's a great new book on the topic that has just come out. But we must ask ourselves, how often does this happen? And how often do people shill on blogs? There's nothing wrong with reasoning about these relative probabilities, from our perspective of incomplete information - and it'd be foolish not too. Anyway; I also believe: P(shill|HNreader) < P(shill), so I'd give you the benefit of the doubt. Theres nothing wrong with applying such a belief, even though it obviously doesn't change whether you ARE a shill or not. But it'd be nice if you answered bugsy's question. Because P(book_good|endorsed,interest) < P(book_good|endorsed)
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- bugsy 16y ago
  Hello Raganwald, I am confused by your responding. On your blog you identify the article as being written by a guest blogger named Nickieben Bourbaki. But now you are here speaking, saying "accusing me", as if you authored the article and not Nickieben Bourbaki. Did you write the article? Did Nickieben Bourbaki? Are you Nickieben Bourbaki? My concern about the credibility of the article given that it lists 3 seminal works including one just released was towards this mysterious author, Nickieben Bourbaki. But then here is a response from you in which you refer to the author as "me", that is to say, yourself, and not Bourbaki. Your statement of defense "The relationship between the speaker and the statement has no bearing on the truth of the statement." does imply as I suspected that there is a relationship between the author of the blog article and someone involved with the just released book he is recommending as an instant classic. What is the nature of this relationship?
  - Luyt 16y ago
    Bourbaki is a well-known pseudonym (at least in mathematical circles). See 'Nicolas Bourbaki', http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbaki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbaki . "Nickieben" could be some altered form of "Nicolas", not sure about that...
    - pygy_ 16y ago
      According to the link at the top of the post[1], Niekieben appears to be The CS counterpart of the mathematical Nicholas. It has been created by Richard P. Gabriel, to publish articles created with his team at Lucid. Gabriel wrote the Worse is better[2] essay, and entertained afterwards a self dialog through several published papers, signing the rebuttals "N. Bourbaki". Apparently, Reg used the discussion on his previous essay[3] as the basis of this one, hence the pseudonym. ___ Reginald: I would also like to know if you or a friend of yours have financial interest in the third book you recommend. I don't question the quality of the book. The Amazon commenters state that its insights are based on empirical evidence, and the topics covered are definitely relevant. You've been using your blog as a revenue stream through Amazon affiliate links ever since I discovered it, and I'm glad you do. I don't understand why you don't disclose whether or not you know one of the many authors. ___ 1. http://www.dreamsongs.com/Nickieben.html http://www.dreamsongs.com/Nickieben.html 2. http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html 3. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2034784 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2034784
- nickieben 16y ago
  Hey raganwald, Nickieben here. You're a little prickly about this subject. How about I answer the question, since I wrote the post? First off, everything on raganwald's blog is in his personal interest directly or indirectly. He isn't a journalist, he doesn't have to answer questins like "Do you own shares in Apple" whenever he mentions OS X, because he doesn't have a "Conflict of Interest." That's because he isn't employed by the publisher, he is the publisher. So his interests are the publisher's interests. He doesn't represent his writing as objective or news. He represents it as his own opinions advanced for his own interests. So I get why he won't answer whether he has an interest in anything he writes about. The answer is "Yes," whether he says so or not. In my mind, a better question is, "Nickieben, what made you suggest that book?" Note the neutral tone :-) And indeed, I can and will answer that question. Both raganwald and Greg Wilson spoke at Stack Overflow's Dev Days in Toronto. Here are a few reactions to their talks: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/27151/devdays-reviews-toronto http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/27151/devdays-review... http://blog.techscene.ca/2009/10/24/in-review-stack-overflow-dev-days-toronto/ http://blog.techscene.ca/2009/10/24/in-review-stack-overflow... Greg's slides are available: http://www.slideshare.net/gvwilson/bits-of-evidence-2338367 http://www.slideshare.net/gvwilson/bits-of-evidence-2338367 Flash forward to last week, and raganwald published a post claiming that programming wasn't an empirical science. I wrote a post correcting raganwald's error, and named three books. Why three? Well, it's a weird "magic number." You know, you say "There are books treating programming as an empirical science," and someone retorts "Oh yeah? Name three!" Two are indeed "classics," although quite honestly I don't treat old books as somehow magic, especially if there aren't a lot of others to read. I wanted the most current example of a new book, and since Greg's book is (a) decent, and (b) doesn't have cobwebs, that's the choice I made. But honestly, don't sweat Greg's book. The important message is really that there is research, but not enough of it. We need so many that the "classics" are the ones that have stood the test of time by being better than the 100s of other books published since they came out. That isn't the case with empirical research on programming. My "endorsement" would mean a lot more if Greg's book was one of twenty published every year backed by research, and you want to know why you should read his instead of the other nineteen. If you want me to retract that endorsement, I could just as easily say Read every book that is backed by actual research. The lack of competition is the real problem here, not whether there's some cozy Toronto cabal of shills in operation.
deleted 16y ago
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by bugsy 16y ago

raganwald 16y ago

Accusing me of having a financial interest in the book other than an affiliate link is called "Playing the man and not the ball." The relationship between the speaker and the statement has no bearing on the truth of the statement. Having "proven themselves through the decades" is an appeal to popularity. What, specifically, about them makes them good? What about "Making Software" makes it bad? Thinking of things as being good strictly because people keep recommending them or because you trust the person recommending them without examining the statements critically is fine. Go your own way. But interestingly, it is exactly the behaviour that the post calls out. It's like saying that Java is good and Haskell is bad because Java has "proven itself" in industry through the decades. Or complaining that a Haskell user praising Haskell can't be trusted because it's in his interest for the language to become more popular. p.s. The OP says the following: "There are at least three decent books on the subject." Is the word "decent" synonymous with "essential?"

feral 16y ago
Your response would have been a lot stronger if you had answered his main question - do you have an interest? This is a question it is reasonable to ask any blogger endorsing a product. It is also a question any blogger should clearly and explicitly answer, if asked. >The relationship between the speaker and the statement has no bearing on the truth of the statement. It has no bearing on the objective truth of the statement. However, we have no Oracle we can check for objective truths. So with incomplete information, we reason subjectively and probabilistically. Books that stand the test of time, and are still popular in our community, are more likely to be good than an arbitrary new unknown book. We apply a different prior, and there's nothing wrong with that. P(Book_good|classicInCommunity) > P(Book_good) When we see three books endorsed, two respected classics, and one new to the market, its natural to wonder whether there's a great new book on the topic that has just come out. But we must ask ourselves, how often does this happen? And how often do people shill on blogs? There's nothing wrong with reasoning about these relative probabilities, from our perspective of incomplete information - and it'd be foolish not too. Anyway; I also believe: P(shill|HNreader) < P(shill), so I'd give you the benefit of the doubt. Theres nothing wrong with applying such a belief, even though it obviously doesn't change whether you ARE a shill or not. But it'd be nice if you answered bugsy's question. Because P(book_good|endorsed,interest) < P(book_good|endorsed)
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
bugsy 16y ago
Hello Raganwald, I am confused by your responding. On your blog you identify the article as being written by a guest blogger named Nickieben Bourbaki. But now you are here speaking, saying "accusing me", as if you authored the article and not Nickieben Bourbaki. Did you write the article? Did Nickieben Bourbaki? Are you Nickieben Bourbaki? My concern about the credibility of the article given that it lists 3 seminal works including one just released was towards this mysterious author, Nickieben Bourbaki. But then here is a response from you in which you refer to the author as "me", that is to say, yourself, and not Bourbaki. Your statement of defense "The relationship between the speaker and the statement has no bearing on the truth of the statement." does imply as I suspected that there is a relationship between the author of the blog article and someone involved with the just released book he is recommending as an instant classic. What is the nature of this relationship?
- Luyt 16y ago
  Bourbaki is a well-known pseudonym (at least in mathematical circles). See 'Nicolas Bourbaki', http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbaki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbaki . "Nickieben" could be some altered form of "Nicolas", not sure about that...
  - pygy_ 16y ago
    According to the link at the top of the post[1], Niekieben appears to be The CS counterpart of the mathematical Nicholas. It has been created by Richard P. Gabriel, to publish articles created with his team at Lucid. Gabriel wrote the Worse is better[2] essay, and entertained afterwards a self dialog through several published papers, signing the rebuttals "N. Bourbaki". Apparently, Reg used the discussion on his previous essay[3] as the basis of this one, hence the pseudonym. ___ Reginald: I would also like to know if you or a friend of yours have financial interest in the third book you recommend. I don't question the quality of the book. The Amazon commenters state that its insights are based on empirical evidence, and the topics covered are definitely relevant. You've been using your blog as a revenue stream through Amazon affiliate links ever since I discovered it, and I'm glad you do. I don't understand why you don't disclose whether or not you know one of the many authors. ___ 1. http://www.dreamsongs.com/Nickieben.html http://www.dreamsongs.com/Nickieben.html 2. http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html 3. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2034784 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2034784
nickieben 16y ago
Hey raganwald, Nickieben here. You're a little prickly about this subject. How about I answer the question, since I wrote the post? First off, everything on raganwald's blog is in his personal interest directly or indirectly. He isn't a journalist, he doesn't have to answer questins like "Do you own shares in Apple" whenever he mentions OS X, because he doesn't have a "Conflict of Interest." That's because he isn't employed by the publisher, he is the publisher. So his interests are the publisher's interests. He doesn't represent his writing as objective or news. He represents it as his own opinions advanced for his own interests. So I get why he won't answer whether he has an interest in anything he writes about. The answer is "Yes," whether he says so or not. In my mind, a better question is, "Nickieben, what made you suggest that book?" Note the neutral tone :-) And indeed, I can and will answer that question. Both raganwald and Greg Wilson spoke at Stack Overflow's Dev Days in Toronto. Here are a few reactions to their talks: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/27151/devdays-reviews-toronto http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/27151/devdays-review... http://blog.techscene.ca/2009/10/24/in-review-stack-overflow-dev-days-toronto/ http://blog.techscene.ca/2009/10/24/in-review-stack-overflow... Greg's slides are available: http://www.slideshare.net/gvwilson/bits-of-evidence-2338367 http://www.slideshare.net/gvwilson/bits-of-evidence-2338367 Flash forward to last week, and raganwald published a post claiming that programming wasn't an empirical science. I wrote a post correcting raganwald's error, and named three books. Why three? Well, it's a weird "magic number." You know, you say "There are books treating programming as an empirical science," and someone retorts "Oh yeah? Name three!" Two are indeed "classics," although quite honestly I don't treat old books as somehow magic, especially if there aren't a lot of others to read. I wanted the most current example of a new book, and since Greg's book is (a) decent, and (b) doesn't have cobwebs, that's the choice I made. But honestly, don't sweat Greg's book. The important message is really that there is research, but not enough of it. We need so many that the "classics" are the ones that have stood the test of time by being better than the 100s of other books published since they came out. That isn't the case with empirical research on programming. My "endorsement" would mean a lot more if Greg's book was one of twenty published every year backed by research, and you want to know why you should read his instead of the other nineteen. If you want me to retract that endorsement, I could just as easily say Read every book that is backed by actual research. The lack of competition is the real problem here, not whether there's some cozy Toronto cabal of shills in operation.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]