I just finished reading Steve McConnell's Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules. Well, many times it was not exactly "reading", more like "page-skipping". Obvious. Obvious. Obvious. But every time I thought I knew what was coming there was something unexpected hidden inside this big recapitulation of Fred Brook's findings. With big hard data pictures on the border. And then I'm horrified that I can relate to most of what is written, and that nothing's really new to me any more. Even if I didn't expect to read it from McConnell.So the excitement of the days when I wrote stuff like Do You Understand XP? is gone. Rapid Development is a good book that reviews every practice it preaches with a critical eye, but I'm not overly excited. Yes, I learned, again, that many so-called Agile practices are known for a long time. But hey, I knew that after reading the Mythical Man Month. Excitement is hard to find in books these days. If I only could find one of those thought-provoking books, that rips your universe apart.
