Book Review: In Search of Stupidity
ISOS looks at the last 25 years of computing and provides an interesting look at what went wrong for some companies: how Wordstar lost the word processor market, the failure of the IBM PC Junior, what happened at Ashton-Tate with dBase, etc.
Positives: The writing is really engaging. Once you start the book, you will not put it down. All the stories are very interesting and well written.
Negatives: There isn’t a lot of analysis of what went wrong. It’s mostly the facts, plus a “they made a positioning mistake” sentence and that’s it. I do not understand how the in fighting between two groups of developers at a company can be considered a marketing mistake. Sometimes the author likes to be clever and his humor might annoy some people.
Conclusion: Well worth your time if you like reading about the history of the computer industry and if you would like to avoid some of these mistakes yourself.