perlmeditation sundialsvc4 <p> What do you <em>read,</em> when you&rsquo;re on the plane or waiting for a backup to finish or whatever the else you do? &nbsp; I mean, <em>besides</em> &ldquo;The Camel Book?&rdquo; &nbsp; Stuff that really gets you <em>thinking,</em> either about the business we are in, or the businesses we work for? </p><p> May I suggest a few, to start? </p><p> <b>The Long Tail</b>, by Chis Anderson ([]). &nbsp; The tag line of this book is &ldquo;Why the future of business is selling less of more.&rdquo; &nbsp; Extending this idea, say, to websites, this might explain why, even though there are bigger and bigger &ldquo;brand-name&rdquo; sites, there are also more sites out there than ever before. &nbsp; I&rsquo;m starting on my third re-reading of this one ... </p><p> <b>Managing the Mechanism</b>, by Vince North ([]), an interesting apparently Kindle-only take that basically says that the reason why software is so hard to manage, is that software&rsquo;s so different. &nbsp; Pleasantly little methodology-bashing. &nbsp; He takes the position that software is a mechanism, always doing whatever it does under its own pre-programmed direction, and that most software projects fail due to <i>project management</i> approaches which do not take the implications of this into account. &nbsp; (A thought-provoking idea ...) </p><p> <b>How to Build Your Own Website for Free</b>, by Charlie Morelli ([]). &nbsp; Okay, so I like &ldquo;Kindle freebies,&rdquo; but lately I have gathered quite a few books that make this point in various ways, &ndash; and frankly, they all are beginning to <em>scare</em> me a little. &nbsp; I mean, you really <em>can</em> do a lot of the stuff that businesses actually want, including mobile-app stuff, for free now. &nbsp; Even though there will always be a demand for heavy-hitting <em>back-end</em> coding, like we are all used to doing, I perceive a sharp reduction in the notion that a web-site and the programming that <em>used to</em> go into it is still worth tens of thousands of dollars. &nbsp; I openly fear that there is developing in our business an over-supply of workers that coincides with a sharp reduction(!) in demand. </p><p> Anyway, there&rsquo;s three. &nbsp; Any good ones from you that you think we programmer-types all should be reading on these cold winter nights? &nbsp; What do you think of what they said? </p>