Grady Booch
scientist, storyteller, philosopher
Book Recommendations:
Recommended by Grady Booch
“@jillnephew This is a recent book I’ve found interesting https://t.co/DI4BVAIji6” (from X)
by Nir Eyal, Ryan Hoover·You?
by Nir Eyal, Ryan Hoover·You?
Revised and Updated, Featuring a New Case Study How do successful companies create products people can’t put down? Why do some products capture widespread attention while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of sheer habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us?Nir Eyal answers these questions (and many more) by explaining the Hook Model—a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior. Through consecutive “hook cycles,” these products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back again and again without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging. Hooked is based on Eyal’s years of research, consulting, and practical experience. He wrote the book he wished had been available to him as a start-up founder—not abstract theory, but a how-to guide for building better products. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behavior. Eyal provides readers with: • Practical insights to create user habits that stick. • Actionable steps for building products people love. • Fascinating examples from the iPhone to Twitter, Pinterest to the Bible App, and many other habit-forming products.
Recommended by Grady Booch
“@AlanHicksLondon Yes that’s a fantastic book But I’m looking for a word!” (from X)
by Byron Reeves·You?
Exploring the findings of recent research on how to humanize the technology of graphical user interfaces, this volume includes the authors' predictions for the future of design and policy in the technology of graphical user interfaces.
Recommended by Grady Booch
“@stewartbrand @patrickbourke There are many ways one could divide software systems: domain and architectural style are the two dimensions I find most interesting. As for style, Mary Shaw/David Garland’s book (Software Architecture) started it all, and you’ll find other resources here https://t.co/O5iuSX3g2K” (from X)
by Mary Shaw, David Garlan·You?
by Mary Shaw, David Garlan·You?
Good software developers often adopt one or several architectural patterns as strategies for system organization. But, although they use these patterns purposefully, they often use them informally and nearly unconsciously. This book organizes this substantial emerging "folklore" of system design -- with its rich language of system description -- and closes the gap between the useful abstractions (constructs and patterns) of system design and the current models, notations and tools. It identifies useful patterns clearly, gives examples, compares them, and evaluates their utility in various settings -- allowing readers to develop a repertoire of useful techniques that goes beyond the single-minded current fads. KEY TOPICS: Examines the ways in which architectural issues can impact software design; shows how to design new systems in principled ways using well-understood architectural paradigms; emphasizes informal descriptions, touching lightly on formal notations and specifications, and the tools that support them; explains how to understand and evaluate the design of existing software systems from an architectural perspective; and presents concrete examples of actual system architectures that can serve as models for new designs. MARKET: For professional software developers looking for new ideas about system organization.
Recommended by Grady Booch
“@MCHammer Also, please meet @roneglash and check out his remarkable book "African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design". https://t.co/5K9I0dtcQb” (from X)
Fractals are characterized by the repetition of similar patterns at ever-diminishing scales. Fractal geometry has emerged as one of the most exciting frontiers on the border between mathematics and information technology and can be seen in many of the swirling patterns produced by computer graphics. It has become a new tool for modeling in biology, geology, and other natural sciences. Anthropologists have observed that the patterns produced in different cultures can be characterized by specific design themes. In Europe and America, we often see cities laid out in a grid pattern of straight streets and right-angle corners. In contrast, traditional African settlements tend to use fractal structures-circles of circles of circular dwellings, rectangular walls enclosing ever-smaller rectangles, and streets in which broad avenues branch down to tiny footpaths with striking geometric repetition. These indigenous fractals are not limited to architecture; their recursive patterns echo throughout many disparate African designs and knowledge systems. Drawing on interviews with African designers, artists, and scientists, Ron Eglash investigates fractals in African architecture, traditional hairstyling, textiles, sculpture, painting, carving, metalwork, religion, games, practical craft, quantitative techniques, and symbolic systems. He also examines the political and social implications of the existence of African fractal geometry. His book makes a unique contribution to the study of mathematics, African culture, anthropology, and computer simulations.
Recommended by Grady Booch
“I absolutely love this book. I was surprised, in my research, to find a very early use of the phrase "domain-driven design" in a paper from 2003 by Bedir Tekinerdogan and Mehmet Aksit from @utwenteEN https://t.co/tJR5WXeg7U” (from X)
Title: Domain-Driven Design( Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software) Binding: Hardcover Author: EricEvans Publisher: Addison-WesleyProfessional
Recommended by Grady Booch
“@BridgerPutnam @simonbrown @hogaur Remarkable book” (from X)
Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of its initial publication, this special edition of Jane Jacobs’s masterpiece, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, features a new Introduction by Jason Epstein, the book’s original editor, who provides an intimate perspective on Jacobs herself and unique insights into the creation and lasting influence of this classic. The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as “perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning. . . . [It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book’s arguments.” Jane Jacobs, an editor and writer on architecture in New York City in the early sixties, argued that urban diversity and vitality were being destroyed by powerful architects and city planners. Rigorous, sane, and delightfully epigrammatic, Jane Jacobs’s tour de force is a blueprint for the humanistic management of cities. It remains sensible, knowledgeable, readable, and indispensable.
Recommended by Grady Booch
“@tctjr Ohhh...yes, love that book by Tainter.” (from X)
by Joseph Tainter·You?
by Joseph Tainter·You?
Political disintegration is a persistent feature of world history. The Collapse of Complex Societies, though written by an archaeologist, will therefore strike a chord throughout the social sciences. Any explanation of societal collapse carries lessons not just for the study of ancient societies, but for the members of all such societies in both the present and future. Dr. Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory that accounts for collapse among diverse kinds of societies, evaluating his model and clarifying the processes of disintegration by detailed studies of the Roman, Mayan and Chacoan collapses.
Recommended by Grady Booch
“"Space, time, matter, and information are all aspects of the same thing, and that how we label locations and times simply expresses different properties." Am reading @markburgess_osl's fascinating book, Smart Spacetime". https://t.co/IbmBa6vSAY” (from X)
by Mark Burgess·You?
`The err is human, to explain is [Mark Burgess]' --Patrick Debois `One of the best reads and written by one of the best minds!' --Glenn O'Donnell (about In Search of Certainty) What if space is not like we learn in mathematics,but more like a network? What happens to the ability to measure things as you shrink or expand? Since Einstein, space and time were the province of theoretical physicists and science fiction writers, but today they are of equal importance in Information Technology, Artificial Intelligence, and even Biology. This book tells a new and radical story of space and time, rooted in fundamental physics but going beyond to underpin some of the biggest questions in science and technology. This is a book about physics, it's about computers, artificial intelligence, and many other topics on surface. It's about everything that has to do with information. It draws on examples from every avenue of life, and pulls apart preconceptions that have been programmed into us from childhood. It re-examines ideas like distance,time, and speed, and asks if we really know what those things are. If they are really so fundamental and universal concepts then can we also see them and use them in computers, or in the growing of a plant? Conversely, can we see phenomena we know from computers in physics? We can learn a lot by comparing the way we describe physics with the way we describe computers---and that throws up a radical view: the concept ofvirtualization, and what it might mean for physics. `I think that it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that [Mark Burgess] is the closest thing to Richard Feynman within our industry' --Cameron Haight `...magnificent; a tour de force of connecting the dots of many disciplines... Mark’s combination of originality, synthesis and practicality knows no equal.' --Paul Borrill