Adam Howitt's Blog

Moneyball, Classic Authors and Software Development

It's been a while since I posted about the great books I have been reading and the most recent stood out so much I had to post.  I figured I'd start with a quick rundown of the alphabetical classic author series and then finish with some really important lessons learnt from the last book I read which easily translate to the programming world.

Classic literature series
The first stop since I left you was Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. I didn't read this book as a child and I'm pretty glad I didn't! The story is well written yet a desperate tale of what life holds in store. It's an important lesson that despite the will to do the right thing and try to lift yourself above arduous circumstances, there are people and systems in place out there who will try to stop you. As an adult I think I've come across these kind of issues over and over again but as a child I think it would have scared me (thanks to the Immigration and Naturalization service to mention one great milestone in my life).

At a loss for a true classic I went with a more contemporary E author and found A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. For those of you who haven't read this book, it reads like one of David Sidaris' books. I found the book to be a quick read and enjoyable as he skips around Lake Forest, IL and then San Francisco. It's as much about psychology as it is about the story it unfolds of the author's life. Only when I began reading it did I discover that my company, Duo Consulting, is responsible for the McSweeneys publishing website which I believe Dave Eggers went on to start after the book.

Melissa recommended my classic F in the form of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This fell around the great wedding planning trip to Boston so the book was pretty much done when I returned to Chicago. I was a little disappointed with the story, expecting something a little more along the lines of a Dickens book.

My last classic was the incredible Lord of the Flies by William Golding. It's not hard to imagine the creator of the TV show Lost finding inspiration in the pages. The book is a lot more than the text on the page as it carefully summarizes modern thinking about human behavior. It's also a gripping tale of childhood adventure and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Other books
I quickly finished The Everything Groom Book by Shelly Hagen and am proud to report that not only did it seem like it might be useful information for a future Groom but it has already helped coordinate my role in the proceedings to date. We now have a date set for the wedding (September 2006), the church and the reception site in Cape Cod. Things are trucking along nicely so I can start planning my Bachelor party in Dublin early next year ;-)

Having seen literally hundreds of Chicago commuters reading The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson I added it to my amazon wishlist and I was fortunate enough to receive a copy for Christmas. It's a true tale (with embellishments) about two events in Chicago's history which occured over the same time. One was the Columbian Exposition and the other was a killer who preyed on the visitors to the fair.

The book I finished this morning was another Christmas present off my wishlist, MoneyBall by Michael Lewis. I fell in love with the Chicago Cubs and Baseball when I moved to the US in 2000. My enthusiasm and comprehension lolled around until I started playing softball with some friends in 2002 for Team Bad Guy. The following year the Cubs beat up on the Braves only to be defeated by the glove of Steve Bartman in the game against the Marlins. As I moved back to Chicago last year I watched more and more baseball and I had heard rave reviews about this book. It's an incredible story of the underdog but it also serves a couple of great lessons which can be applied to the world of software development (with some creative thinking).

1. Wait for your pitch Knowing when to swing at a new business idea is sometimes the least intuitive thing to do but harnessing the skill will save you getting egg on your face.
2. On Base Percentage is more important than slug - Any software team is going to be better off in the long run with people who have a career record of getting on base. In the software world this equates to people who can deliver working solutions on time. The last success is also not as good as your career average as an indicator of future performance. Slug percentage can often be dictated by the quality of the pitches you are thrown
3. All anyone cares about is the postseason. Your regular season record is just a means to an end. - If you slaved your heart out on a project, nobody really cares as long as it works. If you don't deliver a project on time, all your hard work is forgotten. So hours pouring over the ultimate solution which increased your development hours radically generally aren't worth the effort.
4. A GM should focus on efficiency, not the money. An effective GM will do more with less.Be wary of anyone who tries to throw money at a problem. Good problem solvers can work with what they are given while minimizing costs. Avoid adding anyone to your team who believes that the latest greatest hardware is the only way to fix the load issue on your cf server. A different take on this could be that you can run an efficient consulting firm without hiring and paying silly salaries to superstars.

The only thing I didn't like about this book was the bitter rebuttal at the end in the Afterword.  It seems that after he published the hard back version (without the afterword) there was a raging debate where some unpleasant things were said about the book.  Unfortunately Michael Lewis used the afterword of the paperback edition to publish his opinion where I believe none was warranted.  Anyone reading the book could easily see how many issues of the actual debate were unfounded.  That said, I heartily recommend it.