Gunnar Kudrjavets

Paranoia is a virtue

"The average software developer reads less than one professional book per year...

... (not including manuals) and subscribes to no professional magazines." This is actually from DeMarco and Lister, Peopleware, 2d Ed, 1999. I don’t have the book in my hands currently to find out on what page it was, but I stumbled across this quote while reading "Professional Development Handbook" by Construx Software which is Steve McConnell’s company. If you care about developing yourself or your direct reports / organization then this is IMHO a good document to read.

But back to the title. I remember that the first couple of times I read "Peopleware" it didn’t struck me as a big deal. Possibly I’m currently too spoiled by the intellectual atmosphere and all the smart people surrounding me at Microsoft, but it sounds like hard to believe. Is it really that bad?

Posted: Mar 23 2004, 11:12 AM by gunnarku | with 13 comment(s)
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Comments

Thomas Tomiczek said:

It is worse. I consider 95% of the developers out there to be ONE thing: totally incompetent.

if doctors would be as competent as programmers are, NOONE would leave any hospital on earth alive, ever.

The numbers are right - I have met a lot of developers who never read a single professional book, and most try to skip the manuals, too.
# March 23, 2004 2:27 PM

Phil Scott said:

I can see people in 2004 agreeing with that statement because of resources on the web, but in 1999 I think I read at least one technical book a month to keep my skills fresh and to learn new things.

And I was in college at the time. Now a days, I can't live without safari which lets me go through 6 or 7 technical books a month (of course not cover to cover, but I've only read a couple of technical books cover to cover).
# March 23, 2004 2:27 PM

denny said:

Hmmm....

well I guess I am not "Average"

but I am often *ASTOUNDED* at the lame stuff I find...

I am finishing a re-write of an app that uses sql server and:

1) was not in any normal form.
2) had repeated data
3) had no indexes
4) did not use transactions to write multiple tables.
5) used tables to hold data that could have been held in the app's memory.
6) used IIS SessionID as a uniqe value during updates to said tables.
and many other things just as scary.....
PS: if you keep adding rows to a table with session keys how long till you get the same ID? depending on the server load and number of sessions generated per day it can happen sooner than you think.
# March 23, 2004 2:32 PM

Christian Romney said:

Wow. Astounding. The circle of developers I work with buy at least one book a month and are subscribed to 3-4 magazines. I thought that was the norm in such a competitive space where skillsets are obsoleted in months.
# March 23, 2004 3:00 PM

Steve said:

That's because most programming books are cookie-cutters and relate the same information over and over. Most books don't contain the information I look for... I honestly find better explanations over the web than I do in books.
# March 23, 2004 3:10 PM

Phil said:

I read bits and pieces of various books (about 3) every month, and I take notes, try to apply what I learned from them. Some of the developers I work with do not keep up by doing research, reading books, it shows when we start talking about how to solve problems. OTOH people who don't think, but just regurgitate what they read in a book are just as incompetent...
# March 23, 2004 3:56 PM

Me said:

I agree with Steve. I keep up to date using the Web, and the only professional book I've read in the last year is the excellent MS Press book on ASP.NET Server Controls by Nikhil Kothari + Vandana Datye. But the only reason I read it was because of deficiencies in the info available on the web (in this case all the content should really be available on MSDN: the reason it wasn't is that ASP.NET is relatively new).
# March 23, 2004 4:02 PM

Paul said:

Just reinforces my golden rule...

Most (80%) if IT people are incompetent...

Time for some regulation in the industry. Thats how you get the jobs back into your country!!!
# March 23, 2004 5:49 PM

Gunnar Kudrjavets [MSFT] said:

Based on these comments it seems that reading books printed on paper may not be anymore the best way to measure how one keeps up with the professional skills. Apparently during last five years the following types of media: newsgroups, online documentation (á la MSDN), RSS-feeds/blogs, user forums, Wiki etc., have become more influential than anyone anticipated ;-) And of course, nothing beats an ability to think and use common sense.
# March 23, 2004 6:09 PM

TrackBack said:

Gunnar Kudrjavets: "It seems that reading books printed on paper may not be anymore the best way to measure how one keeps up with the professional skills." It's certainly true that there is a lot of great information on the
# March 24, 2004 7:45 AM

Mark Schaal said:

My immediate work group is six developers, all of whom I consider "good". My best guess

me: 4 books a year
one: 1-2 books a year
4 others: 0 books a year
---
average: <1 book a year

I also think there are two important categories: technology books ("learn XML in 21 seconds") which can generally be replaced with web research, and higher level thinking books ("code complete", "peopleware", "design patterns") which I are more effective as books because there is a larger, self-reinforcing message/culture they transmit as well as raw info.
# March 24, 2004 11:11 AM

JD said:

Absolutely true.

It's astounding how many people employed as developers have ZERO interest in improving their skills and learning new things. And it doesn't have to be just books -- Putting in some personal time to try new technologies, reading articles online, going to a user group meeting, communicating with other professionals.

I call it the "Fred Flintstone" thing... 5 o'clock hits and "Yabba Dabba Dooooo", out the door.
# March 24, 2004 11:20 AM

Gunnar Kudrjavets [MSFT] said:

I finally had some time to look up from what page of “Peopleware” (2d Ed, 1999) this quote is from. The information is from page 12. Page 227 contains a reference to the source from who DeMarco and Lister acquired the statistics.
# March 30, 2004 12:41 AM
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