Author: Scott J. Pearson

History Software-Technology

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

by Frederick P. BrooksCopyright (c) 1995 What is relevant about a book, in its second edition, that was originally written a generation or two ago about managing computer projects? The author Brooks led the management of the project for IBM decades ago. The answer to this question is simple and is evident in the title. Scaling software projects from smaller-to-larger does not scale linearly. In case you don’t know what this means, scaling non-linearly means…

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Biography-Memoir History Religion-Philosophy

The Life of Thomas More

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

by Peter Ackroyd Copyright (c) 1998 Thomas More is one of the few beatified English lay-persons in history. He was beheaded for resisting the coming Protestant Reformation. What comes around, goes around, however; More, in the years before King Henry’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon, oversaw the exercise of the death penalty to several Protestant heretics. He stood, as Ackroyd tells it, for the old way of medieval Christendom. He was unwilling to accommodate the…

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Software-Technology

Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

by Martin FolwerCopyright (c) 1999 I picked up this book at the wrong time. The book was so successful that a second edition is due out on November 30, 2018 (less than two weeks from now). On the other hand, I picked up this book at the right time. At work, my project is in the midst of a refactoring project. I am in the middle of changing PHP code from modular functions to object-orientation.…

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Biography-Memoir Science

Einstein: His Life and Universe

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

by Walter IsaacsonCopyright (c) 2007. This book, based upon recent public releases of Einstein’s private letters, provides a more intimate portrait of Einstein than has been possible before recent years. Einstein’s prowess as an intellectual and a scholar is well-known. His closest relationships – with his sons, both of his wives, and his daughters – has not been well-known. What do we discover from this in-depth look at the man who helped set the course…

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Healthcare Humanities

A Journal of the Plague Year

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

by Daniel DefoeWritten 1722 The years 1665-1666 were rough for London. 1665 brought plague, and 1666 brought a city-wide fire. This book contains a fictionalized account of that plague year of 1665. Defoe, writing 50+ years hence, constructed a narrative based upon research in journals from that era. In providing an account of these interesting times, this book provides several interesting interludes. Like the story of a naked Quaker who walked the streets. Or how…

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Management-Business Software-Technology

The Psychology of Computer Programming: Silver Anniversary Edition

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

by Gerald M. WeinbergCopyright (c) 1998, 1971 This book is misnamed, as the author admits. It should be named “The Anthropology of Computer Programming.” It studies the culture of computer programming rather than the psychology of the practice. Fortunately, despite being written over forty years ago, it succeeds at its task for the reader today as well as for the original reader. If you can move past the references to dated languages and programming practices,…

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Healthcare

The Invisible Plague: The Rise of Mental Illness from 1750 to the Present

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

by E. Fuller Torrey and Judy Miller(c) Copyright 2002. This book, written in part by a psychiatrist with expert knowledge of schizophrenia, addresses the question of why mental illness has become increasingly pervasive since 1750. Starting with this date and proceeding towards the present, Torrey and Miller make a commanding case that the prevalence of mental illness has increased steadily since the age of Enlightenment, at least in English-speaking countries. The argument is forceful. They…

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