Gerald M. WeinbergBesprekingen

I read a couple of Weinberg's books. He did some on-site consulting in organization development at my employer's of the time.
I preferred his "Psychology of Computer Programming" for accessibility.

I found this book very helpful, in that it gave me a fresh picture of how life could be inside a high-tech organization (Info Tech in my case). Very accessible, in contrast to all the tech manuals I had to read.

Useful book, back when I was in the trade. Maybe more about management than I cared to know, but it did reaffirm that programming, well done, is a creative activity, and the importance of planning ahead.

It's written in an amusing and easy-to-read way, but it meanders quite a bit from a central point/theme.

It hits lots of really interesting points/ideas/witticisms, and leaves you going "hmm" a few times, but it doesn't really give you, say, a systemic approach to problem-solving or problem-diagnosing. It has a few interesting guidelines, but I'd re-title it something like "Musings on problem solving and some lateral thinking stories".

A perfect lazy Sunday read! Well written with bite sized stories and distilled learnings from each lesson!

This book has lots of good content -- I was highlighting frequently -- but it's not the easiest read.

The high level idea of general systems thinking is that there are large classes of problems that are difficult to analyze. Problems with small number of pieces and lots of structure -- organized simplicity -- can be handled analytically. Problems with many pieces and lots of randomness -- unorganized complexity -- can be handled statistically. Those systems in between -- medium systems -- are too large to be handled analytically but not large enough to be handled statistically.

To illustrate this with an example from the text, one can fully analyze the way that the flu spreads through a very small group of people, e.g., a family. Alternately, one can statistically analyze the way the flu spreads through a population. But figuring out how the flu spreads through a medium sized group -- a school for example -- is difficult, and a system that was analyzable at other scales suddenly has complex and surprising behavior.

As "The Law of Medium Numbers" puts it: "For medium number systems, we can expect that large fluctuations, irregularities, and discrepancy with with any theory will occur more or less regularly."

So where does that leave us? General systems thinking is the field of creating models and understanding the limitations of those models. An important part of this is understanding how different models can seem contradictory yet both be correct. Along the way, Weinberg diverts into discussions of scientific theories and social subcultures. These passages alone make the ideas in the book worthwhile, and I expect that we would have a lot less controversy over models like evolution and climate change if people understood better how models work.

I read this book in the 1980s, probably, and now am writing this review in 2021. This is a book that changed my way of thinking. It's written in an almost jokey style, but is a very serious description of how to think about complex collections of people, ideas, processes, and objects. I learned here to view much of what goes on in the world as systems.

Imagine your well-dressed and intelligent grandpa telling you stories after a life of consulting. That's how it read to me. It's full of very useful ideas, if sometimes a little broadly expressed, pinned to memorable anecdotes with a good stickiness. It's not the kind of writing I'm used to or that I typically enjoy, but it's good and conversational.

A helpful high-level look at the problems in problem-solving. Written in a wry style that was a little jarring to get used to but flowed very well.

Weinberg is a master of extracting the human personality required to run modern business. He describes one of his art-forms in this introduction to consulting practice. This book does not focus merely on short heuristics on how to consult. It instead goes in-depth into the psyche required to succeed as a consultant.

He defines consulting as the art of influencing people at their request. He then describes a rational framework for this practice and how communication can succeed through humility and the proper management of change. This latter topic (the management of change) is where Weinberg is at his best. He distills his advice in rules or laws that govern the enterprise. Often these laws seem paradoxical or unusual at first. Then he supports these laws with interesting anecdotes that bring the truth to the fore. As such, he prepares the landscape of consulting for those new to the practice. Landmines are able to be anticipated and avoided instead of exploded with pain.

At the very least, Weinberg's voice needs to be heard because of his incredible self-awareness. Instead of approaching the matter as mere science and facts, Weinberg artfully describes the human component in consulting - since it is the art of influencing people, at their request. Anyone who wants to get better at navigating the thorny roads of human feelings and human nature would benefit from reading Weinberg's take.

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, this book elucidates many observations about how programmers work. It's like reading an anthropology of a long-hidden culture from decades ago. From one who works in computer programming, the cultural fruit of these observations can be seen in labs today.

To be frank, I've never felt that I've truly understood my peers in the lab. I've done well with the computer - with expressing myself through programs. So many of my peers are socially passive in their demeanor. I'm outgoing, even energetic. The cultural analysis in this book, though dated, helps me see this culture more clearly. It helps me feel more at home in my own environment - and perhaps also, in my own skin. As such, this book achieved its goal in my life, and for that, I am sincerely grateful.

Gerry Weinberg has a PhD in communications and has written around 60 books on various topics, mostly having to do with computer programming. As a glorified computer programmer and an aspiring writer, this Weinberg book on his methodology for writing seems appealing.

His basic take runs through writing from the heart. He uses the analogy for nineteen of twenty chapters in this book of craftsperson building a wall with "fieldstones" and mortar.

For example, the act of sorting stones into piles is compared with sorting one's ideas into working projects. Many ideas, like many stones, are to be thrown away. Some are meant for placement in one section; some are meant for placement in others. All require careful arrangement.

I like how Weinberg's process is highly non-linear, much like the way I think. I tend to accomplish more through the use of non-linear thinking. (Aren't all good minds essentially non-linear?) I also appreciate the spatial metaphors he uses as I find the linear way I was taught to write in high school to be very confusing.

I write words like I write code - in a blow-off-the-doors, mad rush to dump out my thoughts onto a keyboard. Fitting in a linear process does not really work well for me, whether that be in a manager's linear model (waterfall methodology anyone?) or in an English teacher's ploy for high test grades. I do best when I just make a quick dump and organize as I go. This seems to be how Weinberg teaches us how to communicate as well. That confidence in a method that fits me enables me to write more recklessly and with more moxie than I would otherwise. For that, I am grateful to have read this book.

Cult classic? Really? I think ALL the authors were on acid when this book was compiled The allegories are confusing, obscure. It is a very odd read, indeed.

Perhaps, I thought, I would first learn to understand computers, and that learning would help me understand why people acted in such mysterious ways. I didn’t know the term then, but I decided I would become a programmer/analyst, first for giant brains, then for human beings.

Weinberg began working with computers at their literal dawn and became a guru first at IBM ... and then when he applied the principles of the pioneering family therapist Virginia Satir to the workplace via a consulting practice, and indeed improved the work and personal lives of innumerable people worldwide, including me. This volume is about congruence -- matching one’s interior (thoughts and feelings) to their exterior (words and behaviors).

The book change artistry is a collection of essays from [a:Esther Derby|2813|Esther Derby|https://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-d9f6a4a5badfda0f69e70cc94d962125.png], [a:Don Gray|991393|Don Gray|https://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-d9f6a4a5badfda0f69e70cc94d962125.png], [a:Johanna Rothman|2814|Johanna Rothman|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1294685081p2/2814.jpg] and [a:Gerald M. Weinberg|174075|Gerald M. Weinberg|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1295387221p2/174075.jpg]. The essays cover a variety of topics to support professionals in developing their organizational change skills. Change artistry combines the Satir’s Congruence Model with an Aikido framework to help organizations to change in a positive way.

For a review that I did with with the authors of this book, see Interview and Book Review Change Artistry on

Leadership is Like Sex: "Becoming a Technical Leader" by Gerald M. Weinberg Published 1986.
 
 
 
“Over the years, the biggest lesson we have learned from our workshops is that becoming a leader is not something that happens to you, but something that you do.”
 
“Leadership is like sex. Many people have trouble discussing the subject, but it never fails to arouse intense interest and feelings.”
 
 
The essays in the book:
 
What is leadership anyway?
Models of leadership style
A problem-solving style
How leaders develop
But I can’t because.
The three great obstacles to innovation
A tool for developing self-awareness
Developing idea power
The vision
The first great obstacle to motivating others
The second great obstacle to motivating others
The problem of helping others
Learning to be a motivator
Where power comes from
Power imperfection and congruence
Gaining organizational power
Effective organizational problem-solving teams
Obstacles to effective organizing
Learning to be an organizer
How you will be graded as a leader
Passing your own leadership tests
A personal plan for change
Finding time to change
Finding support for change
 
I lead an IT Business Unit for almost 8 years (in a SAP R/3 environment). Some of what Weinberg talks about resonated with me. Weinberg’s approach is as much about therapy and self-help as leadership. The best part of it is when Weinberg explores the reasons why he’s even writing the book at all. “Introspection” is the keyword here and I agree with it. If one wants to be a leader, one has to be visualize it. It seems bullshit, but it really works. I can vouch for it... It’s not a snake oil pitch…
 
The rest of this review can be found elsewhere.

This isn't a book about "computer programming", but about computer programmers. It holds up remarkably well more than 40 years after its publication date because even though the technology changes rapidly, the people creating it do not.

Of course, not everything in the book has aged well. The discussion of "other programming tools" in the final chapter is fairly specific to an era of punch cards and shared terminals and should mostly be skipped. Also, there are some fairly dated views on the roles of women in the workplace and how they can't match up to men--not that Weinberg endorses these views, but it's clear that this is a book from a different era (that said, women in tech is still a problem now).

Overall, a very worthwhile read. We need more tech books that focus on the people and not the technology itself.

Some of the key ideas I found especially memorable:

* We should look at programming as a human activity, not just a mathematical, scientific, or technological one.
* Most programs are built by teams, so we need to look not only at how an individual interacts with a computer, but also how many individuals building software interact with each other.
* In most professions, you look at the work of others to learn. Not so in coding. We rarely read other people's code and prefer to learn by writing things ourselves and repeating everyone else's mistakes. This situation has improved slightly since Weinberg wrote the book thanks to the explosion of open source, but it's still very rare for a programmer to sit down and just read code as a learning exercise.
* Egoless programming: see the code you write not as part of yourself, but as independent objects owned by the team. That way, you don't see flaws in the code as flaws in your character, and you become much better at seeking out feedback and handling criticism.
* Good programming language design is primarily about taking into account the limitations of the human mind. We can't hold or process too much information in our heads, so languages need to be designed around the principles of uniformity, compactness, locality, and linearity.
* Programming is a nascent field and we need a lot more research to figure out how to do it effectively. Sadly, more than 40 years later, we've done relatively little rigorous research and still don't seem to be much closer to knowing the answers.




Some of my favorite quotes from the book:


The material which follows is food for thought, not a substitute for it.

Computer programming is a human activity. One could hardly dispute this assertion, and yet, perhaps because of the emphasis placed on the machine aspects of programming, many people--many programmers--have never considered programming in this light.

Programming is, among other things, a kind of writing. One way to learn writing is to write, but in all other forms of writing, one also reads. We read examples--both good and bad--to facilitate learning. But how many programmers learn to write programs by reading programs? A few, but not many.

Specifications evolve together with programs and programmers. Writing a program is a process of learning--both for the programmer and the person who commissions the program.

The average programming manager would prefer that a project be estimated at twelve months and take twelve then that the same project be estimated at six months and take nine.

Fisher's Fundamental Theorem states--in terms appropriate to the present context--that the better adapted a system is to a particular environment, the less adaptable it is to new environments.

Psychology is the psychology of 18-year-old college freshmen.

Maxwell, the great physicist, once said, "To measure is to know," and his words are often taken as a motto by other sciences. What Maxwell probably meant was "To know how to measure is to know," or even better, "To know what to measure is to know."

The organization chart is a nice toy for a manager, but little programming work would ever get done if interactions among programmers has to follow its narrow, straight lines.

John von Neumann himself was perhaps the first programmer to recognize his inadequacies with respect to examination of his own work. Those who knew him have said that he was constantly asserting what a lousy programmer he was, and that he incessantly pushed his programs on other people to read for errors and clumsiness. Yet the common image of von Neumann today is of the unparalleled computing genius--flawless in his every action. And indeed, there can be no doubt of von Neumann's genius. His very ability to realize his human limitations put him head and shoulders above the average programmer today.

As a rough rule, three programmers organized into a team can do only twice the work of a single programmer same ability--because of time spent coordination problems. Moreover, three groups of three programmers to do only twice the work of a single group--or four times the work single programmer--for the same reason.

The basic rule for size and composition of programming teams seem to be this--for the best programming at the least cost, give the best possible programs you can find sufficient time so you need the smallest number of them. When you have to work faster, or with less experienced people, costs and uncertainties will rise. In any case, the worst way to do programming project is to hire a horde of trainees and put them to work under pressure and without supervision--although this is the most common practice today.

Programmers, being people who tend to value creative event and professional competence, tend to put their stock in people whom they perceive to be good at the things they do. Thus, it is easier to exert leadership over--to influence--programmers by being a soft-spoken programming wizard than by being the world's fastest-talking salesman.

If a manager wants to run a stable project, he would do well to follow this simple maxim: If a programmer is indispensable, get rid of him as quickly as possible.

It is a well-known psychological principle that in order to maximize the rate of learning, the subject must be fed back information on how well or poorly he is doing. What is perhaps not so well known is that people who feel that their performance is being judged but who have no adequate information on how well they are doing will test the system by trying certain variations.

The hierarchical organization, which so many of our projects seem to emulate, comes to us not from the observation of successful machines or natural systems, but from the nineteenth century successes of the Austrian Army.

Whenever a supervisor is responsible for work he does not understand, he begins to reward workers not for work, but for the appearance of work. Programmers who arrive early in the morning are thought to be better programmers than ones who are seen to arrive after official starting time. Programmers who work late, however, may not be rewarded because the manager is not likely to see that they are working late. Programmers who are seen taking to there are not considered to be working, because the manager has an image that programming work involves the solitary thinker scratching out secret messages to the computer.

The amateur, then, is learning about his problem, and any learning about programming he does may be a nice frill or may be a nasty impediment for him. The professional, conversely, is learned about his profession--programming--and the problem being programmed is only one incidental step in the process of his development.

A large proportion of the variance between programmers on any job can be attributed to a different conception of what is to be done.

Lacking any objective measure, we often judge how difficult a problem is by how hard a programmer works on it. Using this sort of measure, we can easily fall into believing that the worst programmers are the best--because they work so hard at it.

Once the solution has been shown, it is easy to forget the puzzlement that existed before it was solved. For one thing, one of the most common reasons for problem difficulty is overlooking of some factor. Once we have discovered or been told this factor is significant, working out the solution is trivial. If we present the problem to someone else, we will usually present him with that factor, which immediately solves nine-tenths of the problem for him. He cannot imagine why we had such trouble, and soon we begin to wonder ourselves.

The explanations for success given by some programmers bring to mind the story of the village idiot who won the monthly lottery. When asked to explain how he picked the winning number, he said, "Well, my lucky number is seven, and this was be seventh lottery this year, so I multiplied seven times seven and got the winning number--63. And, when someone tried to tell him that seven times seven was forty-nine, he merely answered with disdain, "Oh, you're just jealous"--which, of course, was true.

The two major influences we can exert on a programmer's performance are on the desire he feels for working and on what he knows that is needed for the job. The first is called motivation and the second is called training, or, if it is sufficiently general, education. But little is known about why programmers program harder, or whether they are already programming too hard for their own good. Possibly even less is known about educating programmers, even though vast sums have been spent on training schemes.

In a way, the reason it is so hard to attribute the source of programming inefficiency to either programmer or programming language is that if we had ideal programmers, programming languages would be be necessary. It is a psychological which prevents us from writing out problem specifications directly in machine language.

Let's face up to it: people don't think the same way that computers do--that's why we use computers. Programming is at best a communication between two alien species, and programming languages with all their systems paraphernalia are an attempt to make communication simpler for one of those species. Which one? Not the computer, certainly, for nobody ever heard a complaint from a computer that it couldn't do the work.

As a programmer, what I was hoping to get out of this book were some insights into the most essential idea within my profession - that of problem solving. Theoretically, problem solving is indeed the subject of this book, however I feel like the presentation of subject matter suffers greatly due to the style of the book.

There are indeed many useful "nuggets" of information and wisdoms presented throughout that are rather insightful, however what fails in my opinion are the stories that lead from one idea to another and are meant to hold it all together. My guess is that the intention of the authors was to use the comical context of these stories to make the ideas less "dry", however I just couldn't relate to the stories and felt like they distracted from the actual useful material within the book.

Perhaps I am just not part of the intended audience of this book - the intention could be that the text is mainly applicable within the project management context. However as a programmer I am also interested in the general process of problem definition and solution within projects and interactions with clients; unfortunately I felt like I could not get much out of the book no matter what perspective I looked at it from.

A fine effort but not really in my genre of choice

the five stars should be 4 1/2 -(I really miss the half points like on LT)

I enjoyed reading this book just as much as I liked First Stringers.
The planets are very well defined and thought through, there are many different themes interwoven - the science, esp. of chemistry, religion, fantatism, exploitation of people, a kind of church-police called ministers, a very naive young man - a love story that is rather nice.
I'm glad that I got this book through the early reviewers!

Mistress of Molecules By Gerald M. Weinberg

What will life be like in the future? In this book we are living on colonies all over the universe each place is different but the goal is the same to survive. Libra is trying to do just that and make her little corner of the universe a little better for others in the process. She is a young chemist who like her father has set out to defeat the rule of the church and free the people of Precursor. She does this by creating chemicals that cause confusion and delays. Her efforts are misguided but noble and continue until she meets the very alien who is sent to stop her.

I really enjoyed this book even though it represents a fictional, futuristic place the atmosphere felt real. I liked the diverse characters and the interaction between them. The subtext of this book is that people with power always seem to forget about the welfare of the people they are there to protect. It is well worth the read and I would recommend it to any one who likes science fiction, romance and drama. This was a pre-reader copy proved to me by http://www.bookviewcafe.com

Mistress of Molecules By Gerald M. Weinberg

What will life be like in the future? In this book we are living on colonies all over the universe each place is different but the goal is the same to survive. Libra is trying to do just that and make her little corner of the universe a little better for others in the process. She is a young chemist who like her father has set out to defeat the rule of the church and free the people of Precursor. She does this by creating chemicals that cause confusion and delays. Her efforts are misguided but noble and continue until she meets the very alien who is sent to stop her.

I really enjoyed this book even though it represents a fictional, futuristic place the atmosphere felt real. I liked the diverse characters and the interaction between them. The subtext of this book is that people with power always seem to forget about the welfare of the people they are there to protect. It is well worth the read and I would recommend it to any one who likes science fiction, romance and drama.

Mistress of Molecules By Gerald M. Weinberg

What will life be like in the future? In this book we are living on colonies all over the universe each place is different but the goal is the same to survive. Libra is trying to do just that and make her little corner of the universe a little better for others in the process. She is a young chemist who like her father has set out to defeat the rule of the church and free the people of Precursor. She does this by creating chemicals that cause confusion and delays. Her efforts are misguided but noble and continue until she meets the very alien who is sent to stop her.

I really enjoyed this book even though it represents a fictional, futuristic place the atmosphere felt real. I liked the diverse characters and the interaction between them. The subtext of this book is that people with power always seem to forget about the welfare of the people they are there to protect. It is well worth the read and I would recommend it to any one who likes science fiction, romance and drama.

Very light-weight read with rather too many typos and grammatical mistakes.
I think I might have enjoyed this when I was in my very early teens and my critical faculties were undeveloped, but now ... its just incredibly simplistic and lacking in depth. As another reviewer pointed out X-men with disabilities and probably better as a cartoon.
The plot is typical of its genre - bunch of kids with special talents overcome obstacles put in their way by government and the bad guys to come together and discover they are stronger together than on their own.

Mistress of Molecules By Gerald M. Weinberg

What will life be like in the future? In this book we are living on colonies all over the universe each place is different but the goal is the same to survive. Libra is trying to do just that and make her little corner of the universe a little better for others in the process. She is a young chemist who like her father has set out to defeat the rule of the church and free the people of Precursor. She does this by creating chemicals that cause confusion and delays. Her efforts are misguided but noble and continue until she meets the very alien who is sent to stop her.

I really enjoyed this book even though it represents a fictional, futuristic place the atmosphere felt real. I liked the diverse characters and the interaction between them. The subtext of this book is that people with power always seem to forget about the welfare of the people they are there to protect. It is well worth the read and I would recommend it to any one who likes science fiction, romance and drama.