This comment will make it worse
Sorry Paul but with this kid's penchant for shameless spin, he is going to be one day , a Nullabour Prime Minister.
In our third extract from Paul Carr's book Bringing Nothing to the Party, the nascent net-botherer muses on one particularly irksome and precocious flash in the dot com pan... During the post-bubble years, between 2000 and 2004, the entire dot com industry was in turmoil. No one could agree whether we were seeing an industry …
The only difference now is as a Web 2.0 developer you hope one of the survivors from Web 1.0 still has enough cash in it's coffers to buy you out.
A prime example of this is the two-tier model for on-line games that has become predominant as people keep trying to somehow invent another cash cow like World of Warcraft. You can play for free, or for some real cash you can buy "upgrades", which can give you an in-game advantage over your opponents. And yet you know in each of these developer's minds they continue to dream that they'll be the next millionaire. Keep dreaming, the Internet has become the equivalent of the biblical tower of Babel, and we all know what happened to it.
And I don't even own it ... yet. Give me 5 seconds. OK, it's on the way.
BTW I just finished reading "Dreaming in Code" on the recommendation of some Reg hack. It's pants. Don't bother.
The documentary aspect is OK (if you enjoy watching car wrecks, which I do) but the several chapters of random pontification on process made me want to vomit. Nothing in here you won't know already, and nothing approaching an analysis of each. It's about on a level with Panorama, if you like that sort of thing.
OTOH, the whole thing will give you a huge sense of superiority over Mitch Kapor, which can't be bad. You won't believe how long it takes to write a calendar program, if you utterly suck at development!
Hmm, it's starting to sound like a good review. But next time someone exclaims "Haven't you read Dreaming in Code?" (as El Reg asked last week) ask them wtf their point is, because the book neither draws nor invites conclusions. A "worthy successor to the Mythical Man Month" it is not.
It's also totally unsuitable for non-techies, whatever the blurb claims. He explains simple things in tedious detail and then throws complex techie terms in at random without any explanation at all.
And, to segue back onto topic, it costs twice as much as Paul's book.