interviews and important events.
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Philip Greenspun |
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Software Engineering |
Philip Greenspun
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Who's linking to this?Philip Greenspun has had the same MIT email address since the age of 13, and he's had a profound yet subtle impact on many software developers. His 1999 book, Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, was an inspiration to many programmers writing server-side code on Unix/Linux platforms. It was one of the first to be published both as a free download and as a traditional book. (Filled with color photos, printed on high-quality coated stock, and weighing in at 3.5 pounds it was also the first computer coffee-table book.)
In this interview with IT Conversations' host Doug Kaye, Philip describes the evolution of his attitudes towards software engineering as manifested in Philip and Alex's Guide and his latest book, Software Engineering for Internet Applications, for a course at MIT where "the goal of the course is that the student finishes knowing how to build Amazon.com by him or herself." (That must be one heck of a semester!)
Oh, and by the way, Philip also built photo.net, which receives 10 million hits/day from 400,000 unique visitors each month, and co-founded and ran ArsDigita, a now-defunct website development shop using many of the tools Philip and his associates developed previously. You won't want to miss the story of how the venture capitalists to whom Philip relinquished control of this $20 million profitable company ran it into the ground. There are lessons there for any budding (or experienced) entrepreneur.
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Philip & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing
by Philip Greenspun
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| List Price: | $50.95 | |
| Amazon Price: | $32.10 | |
| You Save: | $18.85 (37%) |
Average Customer Rating:
4.5
Book Desription: This isn't another cookie-recipe approach to planning a successful Web site. Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, by MIT veteran Philip Greenspun, is both broadly conceptual and deeply technical, and it assumes that the reader is willing to think seriously about the challenge of building a content site, a community site, or an e-commerce store before plunging in.
Although heavily Unix-oriented, it does not set out to proselytize a product, or even suggest that there is only one way to solve certain technical challenges. Rather, it encourages the reader to think about Web content and functionality as something designed to help visitors answer questions or do something useful. This may sound nebulous, but his observations about why Web sites go bad are illustrated with many well-chosen examples.
The core of the book is quite technical. Three long sections on publishing, community, and e-commerce architectures are illustrated by the author's data models and working open-source systems, so someone with C, SQL, and a good understanding of Internet Protocol (IP) under his or her belt will get the most out of the discussion. Such technical readers will find numerous Web addresses and other citations for further technical information. The author also invites readers to use his code if appropriate.
Although there is a lot of technical meat here, Greenspun dispenses with a dry, technical tone. Throughout, he manages to speak to the reader in a way that is always interesting and frequently bemused or ironic. The overall effect is that of a wry professor who knows his stuff, has thought about the problems, and isn't about to engage in commercial puffery. --Kathleen Caster
Amazon.com Customer Comment:
The lessons will last while the technology changes. I thought I knew a lot about building good web sites, until I started reading this book. The author, Philip Greenspun is a professor of Computer Science at MIT and has built over 100 large-scale sites. The purpose of the book is twofold: to share the author's mistakes and successful strategies so that hopefully you don't have to make the same mistakes, and secondly, to emphasize how best to leverage the collaborative power of the Internet to provide services that were impossible or impractical before. Now I know how to properly engineer an RDBMS-backed site, how to build a personalization system, how to build an online community-based system (correctly), and how to build a content management system--and tie it to the personalization system. I have already incorporated many of the core concepts of the book into my own projects. This is the best web publishing book I have read to date.
TrackBacks |
Here's what others have written about Philip Greenspun: Software Engineering: |
» Audio interview with me, me, me (from Philip Greenspun's Weblog) |
Some of the topics covered are rather ancient and/or embarrassing but if you're curious to hear what I sound like... [Read More...] |
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Tracked April 2, 2004 05:38PM |
» Philip Greenspun audio interview (from Elf) |
Philip Greenspun now has an audio interview up at IT Conversations. It touches on some topics that Greenspun describes as "rather ancient and/or embarrassing", but still constitutes an interesting 40 minutes. Subjects touched on range from Photo.Net ... [Read More...] |
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Tracked April 2, 2004 09:41PM |
Doug Kaye interviews Philip Greenspun on IT Conversations.... [Read More...] |
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Tracked April 3, 2004 05:37PM |
» Philip Greenspun on Open Source Economics (from Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog) |
In a recent IT Conversations, Philip Greenspun talks about the economics of open source. [Read More...] |
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Tracked May 5, 2004 10:06AM |
» Multimedia link dump (from Information Management Weblog) |
Rather listen than read? Here's a few things that look promising: Interview with Philip Greenspun on IT Coversations. (via Phil Windley. FirstMonday's coverage of the Fifth Annual Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World includes reco... [Read More...] |
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Tracked May 8, 2004 05:58PM |
» open source (from Bruce Landon's Weblog for Students) |
Open source opportunity, open source risk . [Read More...] |
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Tracked September 22, 2004 08:33AM |
» Amount of Documentation is a Function of the Size of the Time (from Developing Software) |
I've only listened to half of Philip Greenspun's interview over at IT Conversations, but I wanted to jot down something that he mentioned and something that I've been thinking about. [Read More...] |
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Tracked January 20, 2005 07:18PM |
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |