Last monday was the third edition of the book club. We grew to a party of five this time. Heri talked about Building Scalable Websites, a book by Cal Henderson, lead developer of flickr. Even though Heri recommends the book, he didn’t seem very passionate talking about it. He says it covers a lot ground, but there is only one chapter that talks specifically about flickr. It led to a discussion about denormalization. People thought that few knew about it, or that they weren’t pragmatic enough about it.

Chris Lamothe then presented Textmate: Power Editing for the Mac. He liked it a lot as it allowed him to really understand the power of Textmate. I’m halfway through the book and like it, but I’m surprised that about two thirds of the book are consecrated to building your own automations. I was expecting more on the editing side.

Next book was Scrum and Xp From the Trenches, which is available as a free pdf. Fred Brunel and I had a very lengthy discussion about process in general. It’s been a while since I talked about process, which used to be one of my favorite subject. I feel I’ve read enough about Agile in general (I think I’m post-agile now), but the book seems short and contains actual experiences instead of just principles and practices, so I might take a look at it.

Other reports

  • Heri’s report

  • Fred Brunel’s review of Scrum & XP from the Trenches