Book 4: Getting Real

Want to build a successful web app? Then it's time to Get Real. Getting Real is a smaller, faster, better way to build software.

 With this pretentious phrase, 37Signals, the company where the Ruby on Rails creator works starts a fabulous book about an innovative software development methodology for web applications. In fact, it reveals a new web development philosophy.

Author: 37Signals
Valoration: 9 / 10
Length: 194 pages (paperback version)
Book website: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php
Download link: n/a: book can be read on-line, in HTML format from previous link

The experience to write this book from the folks at 37Signals comes from the successful projects they worked on like Basecamp (project management), Campfire (group chat for businesses) or Ta-da List (on-line to-do lists) among others. The philosophy behind this book is to do away from he bureaucracy and just create what the clients expect, not what developers think they want.

Getting Reals is divided in chapters which in turn are divided in short essays. Each of these essays appear in the table of contents with a title in a form of a short sentence and a tagline. After reading the book and learning its mantras, with only reading the TOC you can easily recall what you learned.

The good thing about this book is that it represents more than just a software methodology: it also enters in details like managing your team, organizing work, interface design, pricing your application, and promotion & support of your product.

With a good clear style of writing, Getting Real expresses concisely what it advocates. Also, the typography of the HTML book is easy to read and with appropriate font size. Finally, the design of the book is clean and lean, in concordance with the concepts of the book.