Indie – Page 2 – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

Software Quality Assurance 101: Best Practices Made Easy

By Scott J. Pearson | July 25, 2023October 20, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Quality assurance (QA) is an essential part of software development. It helps ensure that newly developed software actually does what it’s intended to. This seems like a deceptively easy task at first, but testing is, in truth, a skilled art-form. In this book, Rachelle Rood and Jessica Parker attempt to orient those just entering the field how to approach their work. They break down complex topics while pointing practitioners how to add value to software…

At the Heart of Management: Process, Tools & the Ubiquitous Exponential Law

By Scott J. Pearson | July 20, 2023September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Management and leadership, often coupled together, require a certain amount of experience and training, and much of this is inaccessible through education alone. Like Lino Ciceri, who comes from the background of a chemist, we may have rigorous scientific, technical, or engineering skills, but by themselves, these do not equip us with the skills and character for leading teams. Ciceri tries to fill this gap with this guide to how to think as a manager.…

Indie Leadership Management-Business Program Management

The Product Manager’s Guide: Strategy, Psychology & Leadership at Work

By Scott J. Pearson | June 4, 2023September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

In a diverse business, a product manager oversees all of the projects for several products. That is, it sits a step above project managers on the org chart. This corporate designation seems to exist across many companies, especially those which are larger. Potential readers might be mystified by this role among their co-workers; others might aspire to this role and want to know what to do. In this self-published work, Daniel Chak, an experienced product…

Biography-Memoir Indie Writing-Communication

We are the Words: The Master Memoir Class

By Scott J. Pearson | February 16, 2023February 16, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Writing a memoir seems deceivingly easy at first. Anyone can write about their own life, right? Yet crafting a good memoir – one that vividly communicates and mesmerizes with its words – is a difficult task. As this book’s title infers, a memoir consists of the writer’s life becoming the words, which in turn take on a life of their own. Its author Beth Kephart teaches writing at workshops and an Ivy League university (the…

Indie Leadership Mentoring

Equip Your Inner Coach: Personal, Career & Leadership Development in an Uncertain Age

By Scott J. Pearson | February 11, 2023September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

How can someone advance their career and leadership skills without having access to good, personalized mentoring? Many – particularly women and minorities – in the workforce lack such access, yet their ambition to contribute to the world does not lack. What are they to do? One thing they can do is check out Janet Bickel’s book. In it, she teaches readers to rely on their “inner coach” and like-minded peers in figuring out how to…

Fiction-Stories Indie Kids

The Bridge of Little Jeremy

By Scott J. Pearson | June 29, 2022June 29, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

Little Jeremy is a 13-year-old young man from Paris. He enjoys painting and the visual arts. He is homeschooled because of a heart condition. His mother works hard at a nursing home to support their family, and his father died previously in war. Little Jeremy and his dog Leon stay home for most of the day, but explore the downtown area around their apartment flat near Notre Dame cathedral. His mother is in a big…

Biography-Memoir Healthcare Indie

Living with CMT: A Mother & Son Journey through Charcot Marie Tooth Disease

By Scott J. Pearson | October 16, 2021October 16, 2021 by Scott J. Pearson

A close friend of mine was recently diagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT). It’s a disease of the nerves (a neuropathy) that especially affects the distal parts of legs and arms. I’ve had a longtime curiosity about how diseases affect life, and I like to read. Therefore, I bought this book to empathize with his experience more. Here, Johnson describes her lifelong experiences on a particularly difficult life journey with CMT. She does so with the…

Biostatistics Indie

Best Practices in Data Cleaning

By Scott J. Pearson | July 18, 2021July 18, 2021 by Scott J. Pearson

Professionally, I write software used for data collection in biomedical research projects. My current project extends from data collection into the field of interpretation. Combining these demands requires that I learn something about data cleaning. Thus, this book’s title caught my eye. It is an academic book, not a popular book. I usually write in-depth book reviews on what I read, so I am writing one here. This book seems like it began as an…

Indie Software-Technology

Cybersecurity: Advanced and Effective Measures to Secure Your Cyber Networks

By Scott J. Pearson | June 22, 2020June 22, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

This book attempts to provide basic and practical measures that can guide an IT professional into more security expertise. It claims that it can teach the reader methods on how to detect vulnerabilities. It succeeds in surveying the technologies relevant to the task, but it falls short in the execution of writing. Lewis, no doubt, is a good security professional. However, he does not explain a topic thoroughly. He is too terse and concise. He…

Indie Software-Technology

JavaScript from ES5 to ESNext

By Scott J. Pearson | May 19, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

In recent years, JavaScript (JS) has seen a resurgence in popularity. From NodeJS on servers to PhoneGap on mobile devices to common standards in web browsers, JS seems to be everywhere. ES is the abbreviation for ECMA Script, the standard which JS implements. This book covers in detail the advance of the ES standards from earlier days (ES5) to 2019 (ESNext). Much effort has been given on the issue of “callback hell” and features resulting…