Regardless, Getting Real is all about simplifying the typical software project and lately a lot from what I remember from the book (reading it several years ago) has been popping back up into my mind based upon some current projects that I’m involved in.

A quote that I have carried with me from reading the book several years ago is in Chapter 5 – “Start With No”:

Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.
- Steve Jobs

You can buy Getting Real directly from 37signals at http://gettingreal.37signals.com or read it online for free over at http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php

I think this is going to be next on my reading list (after trying to wrap up some of these projects)… :)

Interviewer: What are you plans for after graduation?

Chris: I’m either going to become a mailman or try to write dirty stories for pornographic magazines, but I still have a little bit more time to think about it.

This is basically just for me, but I’m sure other people might appreciate them.

- “They [Austin, TX] created a lifestyle mentality, where Pittsburgh and Detroit were still trapped in that Protestant-ethic/bohemian-ethic split, where people were saying, “You can’t have fun!” or “What do you mean play in a rock band? Cut your hair and go to work, son. That’s what’s important.” Well, Austin was saying, “No, no, no, you’re a creative. You want to play in a rock band at night and do semiconductor work in the day? C’mon! And if you want to come in at 10 the next morning and you’re a little hung over or you’re smoking dope, that’s cool.”

- ” Being a child of the ’60s, I kept thinking about the Mamas and the Papas, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and the early San Francisco music scene. Then I read this book called “Fire in the Valley,” written 20 years ago about the early Silicon Valley, and you look at the pictures and it’s just mind-blowing! You have photos of the traditional engineers wearing bowties next to these hippies with long hair. I mean, think about Jobs and Wozniak with hair down to their butts going in and asking Don Valentine for money. I interviewed Don Valentine, he said, “I didn’t care what Steve Jobs looked like, I didn’t care that he didn’t have any shoes.” In other areas these people would have been run out the door.

The ’60s cracked the bohemian/bourgeois split, and California is the place this stuff starts to brew. It became very early on a kind of capitalism that recognizes that you don’t have to have all this bullshit organizational, bureaucratic nonsense to be successful. San Francisco was a place where weird people could find a place. In these corporate organizational-based communities where you have the country-club type of atmosphere, there was no place for a different or eccentric person there. ”

- “We have to take responsibility for the society we’re driving. If not, the social and political consequences are dire. The creative class has to look beyond itself and offer members of society a vision in which all can participate and benefit from. That’s the challenge of our age.”

It’s not the newest article (it’s from June 2002), but it’s still a pretty good read for anyone who might see “eye to eye” with this segment of the population.