Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

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Raymond Chen: Celebrating the Old in the New

Raymond Chen’s The Old New Thing arrived within the original delivery promise, even though amazon.com had beseeched me to approve a delay. 

{tags: orcmid Raymond Chen Windows software development}

The problem with the book’s timely arrival is I’m in the middle of a crunch and I don’t dare let myself get lost in 21 chapters of amazing material, some I know I’ll be using real soon now.

OK, I peeked at the table of contents, read the preface, and scanned the first couple of articles.  To protect myself, I decided that my wife, Vicki, would enjoy some of the first articles on user-interface design, and I handed it off to her.

Enjoy?  She hooted, howled, stamped her feet, and had tears in her eyes.  She did that all the way to around page 29 where the technical aspects left her behind.

This is probably the most fun I have seen Vicki have over geek pleasures.  She’s a potter.  Computer techie conversations leave her shut out and cranky.  But Raymond has the knack of seeing things from more than one point of view and explaining it at the level where it works best.

You might not display The Old New Thing on your coffee table (but then you might).  Yet there’s more than one reason to possess the book (and the downloads that are also available): A megadose of Raymond Chen might help you learn to look at your software involvement in ways that recognize the ridiculous and honor the tried-and-true.  And have a lot of fun doing it.

I can’t wait to start listening to the interviews he’s giving as part of his duty to promote the book.  Hmm, how about a bookstore event within Raymond’s bicycling range?  If I bring Vicki I wonder if she's let it count as a date night out?  Well, best not suggest it, geek codger.

posted by orcmid at 1/23/2007 01:47:51 PM