How to get an “A+” on your performance review

My advice on how to get an awesome grade at your next performance review is to simply follow Rands’ advice:

@rands, 1/11/2010: “Be productive, be fantastically clever when necessary, speak truth to power, hit your dates, and don’t ship crap.”

By the way, if you’re a programmer or a manager of programmers and you’re not reading everything that Michael Lopp, a.k.a. Rands in Repose has to say, you’re missing out big time.

Reading is fundamental

I was knocking about on LinkedIn this morning and saw they’ve added a new “Amazon Reading List” feature. So I took it for a spin and wrote up quick reviews for three of my new favorite books: Chad Fowler’s Passionate Programmer, Martin Fowler’s Refactoring, and Bob Martin’s Clean Code.

Then I thought: Why should LinkedIn have all the fun? So I’ve added a new page to my site called Reading where I’ve posted the reviews.

“What are you reading?” is one of my standard interview questions. And despite never having enough time for anything I do try to read a few new books on programming, management, and business every year.

Let’s see if I can keep this up.

Free Ruby e-book

Courtesy of Lifehacker (a site I’m really starting to love):

“Interested in learning Ruby, the open-source, object-oriented programming language? Start with Mr. Neighborly’s Humble Little Ruby Book, a new e-book that teaches the basics and then some.”

In addition to Mr. Neighborly’s slim volume, my growing Ruby library now includes:

• Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide, by Dave Thomas (the “pickaxe” book)
• Agile Web Development with Rails, by Dave Thomas and David Hansson (the long-awaited 2nd edition, no less)
• Ruby Cookbook, by Carlson and Richardson (O’Reilly)

Most programming gurus recommend learning at least one new programming language per year. Looks like in 2007 it’s going to be Ruby for me assuming I find time to do something I only rarely managed to do in grad school: Actually read the books I buy.

How to be more efficient

I’m reading another brilliant book by Tom DeMarco (author of the excellent Peopleware) called Slack. His basic point is that the drive toward superefficiency is costing us more than it brings in lost creativity and effectiveness.

Key is a quote by Tom Lister (I just posted this over at CodeQuotes):

People under time pressure don’t think faster.

More on this topic to come, but let’s just say that I’ve bought a couple of copies of this book for some colleagues and executives at my current place of employment.