Designing and Engineering Time: The Psychology of Time Perception in Software

Description

One of the reviewers thought this book was a gem for experienced programmers, I totally disagree. I'm an experienced programmer and I suggested this book for a book club at work. We are all experienced programmers. But I did not find this book that much helpful. I would rather have spent the time it took to read the book doing something else... like reading About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design (again). I probably found two or three concepts interesting throughout the book. In general I think it already states the obvious, uses too much comparisons and has too much images (just for the sake of it - without adding value). A MSDN article with say, 20 pages, would have been more than enough instead of a 191 p book. I expected to get some examples from real life software and to get more insight in software and how to handle time. After reading the book I wanted to get the sense of "Hey! We can do even better software, now let's go and do it!" But instead the book left me feeling like I had wasted my time reading it from cover to cover. When reading Designing and Enginering Time I though that it appears to be a report from a student, like a master thesis report. When discussing the book with a colleague in the book club he said the exact same thing! The last two chapters was ok but it is still a "Don't like it" from me.