Submission + - In Search of Stupidity
Craig Maloney writes: "The computer industry has had it's share of successful companies. One can easily name the high-tech high rolling companies like Microsoft, IBM, Intel, and many more. But like most industries, there's a sizable list of companies that didn't make it; companies that shot straight up to the top, only to combust like fireworks. Then there are the companies that, like the fable of the tortoise and the hare, ceded their lead while internal bickering and other navel-gazing caused them to slack while their competition steadily overtook them. In Search of Stupidity is the fireside chat with a wise veteran of several of these now-defunct, long-extinct computer companies. His stories read like parables of warning for those who would soon forget the lessons of the past.
The message of the book is pretty simple: Microsoft became the #1 software company because they didn't screw up like the rest of their peers. When they did screw up, they learned from their mistakes and either killed the offending projects quickly, or made the next release better. Throughout the book, every one of the companies profiled is compared against Microsoft. With the aid of hindsight, the results are not surprising- almost every company profiled in the book had an advantage over Microsoft, and invariably each company squandered their advantage. I almost felt sorry for these companies and how badly they misjudged their lead. Some, like Lotus and Wordstar, fiddled with meaningless technical details at their own peril. Wordstar spent scads of time finely tuning printer drivers and bickering amongst their development teams instead of releasing new and better product. Others, like Ashton-Tate and Borland, actively worked to piss off their developer networks and customers. And every time we boot our computers, we'll never forget the results of that fateful meeting between IBM and Gary Kildall, with a decision that would forever change the IBM PC and the personal computing industry. Even the mighty IBM earns their place this book, with their spectacularly awful IBM PC-Jr, and the "idiot piper" OS/2 (if you ever doubted how much damage OS/2 did to those that followed it down the prim-rose path to ruin, the chapter "The Idiot Piper: OS/2 and IBM" will leave you astounded at the carnage). And lest we forget the mishandling of the Pentium division bug, which ruined Intel's reputation for quite some time. Also well covered are some of the more spectacular venture-capital implosions from the "dot com bubble". Interestingly, Microsoft itself earns it's own comparison against Free and Open Source Software, and their heavy-handed methods of competing. It's clear there was no lack of fodder for this book.
Each of the stories presented in the book is very engaging. I remember reading Byte and Popular Computing as a kid back then and watching these stories unfold, wondering what what caused these companies who were once the top in their field suddenly evaporate with only disks and manuals as proof of their existence. In Search of Stupidity was a fascinating read for me, and explained the history of these companies in a way that nobody else had ever explained it to me before. Many of the stories have footnotes, with the author stating his experiences while working or consulting at the companies profiled. The author describes meetings and trade shows he attended, and gives first-hand accounts whenever possible. It's an enlightening look into an industry that I was too young to have had experienced first-hand.
The latter part of the second edition of In Search of Stupidity gives pointers for how companies can avoid the stupid mistakes that killed or maimed the profiled companies. He mentions that he purposely decided against providing these tips in the last book because he thought the anecdotes and histories provided enough guidance, but decided in this edition to provide analysis, checklists, and other helpful sage advice. The advice portion is broken up into two sections. The first is a set of general tips on how to avoid stupidity, and the second is a detailed analysis of each chapter, and how each individual tale could have been prevented. They provide an additional reinforcement of the topics presented in the book, and are a welcome addition to an already excellent book.
As a fan of computer history, In Search of Stupidity was a perfect read for me. Reading a first-hand account of what caused the death of companies and software that were once the gold-standards of software and hardware was fascinating. This book should be required reading for anyone who currently develops, manages, or is in someway responsible for software, whether commercial or otherwise. It's said that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, and I can think of no better accounting of computing history that should have turned out differently than In Search of Stupidity."
The message of the book is pretty simple: Microsoft became the #1 software company because they didn't screw up like the rest of their peers. When they did screw up, they learned from their mistakes and either killed the offending projects quickly, or made the next release better. Throughout the book, every one of the companies profiled is compared against Microsoft. With the aid of hindsight, the results are not surprising- almost every company profiled in the book had an advantage over Microsoft, and invariably each company squandered their advantage. I almost felt sorry for these companies and how badly they misjudged their lead. Some, like Lotus and Wordstar, fiddled with meaningless technical details at their own peril. Wordstar spent scads of time finely tuning printer drivers and bickering amongst their development teams instead of releasing new and better product. Others, like Ashton-Tate and Borland, actively worked to piss off their developer networks and customers. And every time we boot our computers, we'll never forget the results of that fateful meeting between IBM and Gary Kildall, with a decision that would forever change the IBM PC and the personal computing industry. Even the mighty IBM earns their place this book, with their spectacularly awful IBM PC-Jr, and the "idiot piper" OS/2 (if you ever doubted how much damage OS/2 did to those that followed it down the prim-rose path to ruin, the chapter "The Idiot Piper: OS/2 and IBM" will leave you astounded at the carnage). And lest we forget the mishandling of the Pentium division bug, which ruined Intel's reputation for quite some time. Also well covered are some of the more spectacular venture-capital implosions from the "dot com bubble". Interestingly, Microsoft itself earns it's own comparison against Free and Open Source Software, and their heavy-handed methods of competing. It's clear there was no lack of fodder for this book.
Each of the stories presented in the book is very engaging. I remember reading Byte and Popular Computing as a kid back then and watching these stories unfold, wondering what what caused these companies who were once the top in their field suddenly evaporate with only disks and manuals as proof of their existence. In Search of Stupidity was a fascinating read for me, and explained the history of these companies in a way that nobody else had ever explained it to me before. Many of the stories have footnotes, with the author stating his experiences while working or consulting at the companies profiled. The author describes meetings and trade shows he attended, and gives first-hand accounts whenever possible. It's an enlightening look into an industry that I was too young to have had experienced first-hand.
The latter part of the second edition of In Search of Stupidity gives pointers for how companies can avoid the stupid mistakes that killed or maimed the profiled companies. He mentions that he purposely decided against providing these tips in the last book because he thought the anecdotes and histories provided enough guidance, but decided in this edition to provide analysis, checklists, and other helpful sage advice. The advice portion is broken up into two sections. The first is a set of general tips on how to avoid stupidity, and the second is a detailed analysis of each chapter, and how each individual tale could have been prevented. They provide an additional reinforcement of the topics presented in the book, and are a welcome addition to an already excellent book.
As a fan of computer history, In Search of Stupidity was a perfect read for me. Reading a first-hand account of what caused the death of companies and software that were once the gold-standards of software and hardware was fascinating. This book should be required reading for anyone who currently develops, manages, or is in someway responsible for software, whether commercial or otherwise. It's said that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, and I can think of no better accounting of computing history that should have turned out differently than In Search of Stupidity."
