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Getting Real
BOOK REPORT
Getting Real is the business, design, programming, and marketing philosophies of 37signals — a developer of web-based software used by over 1 million people and businesses in 70 countries.
WHY IS THE BOOK RELEVANT?
37signals used the unconventional Getting Real process to launch five successful web-based applications (Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack, Writeboard, Ta-da List), and Ruby on Rails, an open-source web application framework, in just two years with no funding, no debt, and only 7 people.
WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME?
Anyone working on a web app — including entrepreneurs, designers, programmers, executives, or marketers — will find value, fresh perspectives, and inspiration in this practical book. At under 200 pages it's quick reading too. Makes a great airplane book.
WHO IS 37SIGNALS?
We’re a privately-held Chicago-based company committed to building the best web-based software products possible with the least number of features necessary. Our products do less than the competition — intentionally. We’ve been in business since 1999 and love what we do.
Getting Real is the business, design, programming, and marketing philosophies of 37signals — a developer of web-based software used by over 1 million people and businesses in 70 countries.
WHY IS THE BOOK RELEVANT?
37signals used the unconventional Getting Real process to launch five successful web-based applications (Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack, Writeboard, Ta-da List), and Ruby on Rails, an open-source web application framework, in just two years with no funding, no debt, and only 7 people.
WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME?
Anyone working on a web app — including entrepreneurs, designers, programmers, executives, or marketers — will find value, fresh perspectives, and inspiration in this practical book. At under 200 pages it's quick reading too. Makes a great airplane book.
WHO IS 37SIGNALS?
We’re a privately-held Chicago-based company committed to building the best web-based software products possible with the least number of features necessary. Our products do less than the competition — intentionally. We’ve been in business since 1999 and love what we do.
196 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
Jason Fried
14 books1,347 followersJason Fried is the co-founder and President of 37signals. Jason believes there’s real value and beauty in the basics. Jason co-wrote all of 37signals books, and is invited to speak around the world on entrepreneurship, design, management, and software.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 304 reviews
December 19, 2012
Unlike their Re-work book, this book actually makes sense. It's kind of a set of 'best practices' on how to efficiently build a web application. I would even claim that many of the advice could be successfully applied outside the web application or even software domain. The book is organised in 'themes' like 'Organisation', 'Code', 'Process', 'Feature Selection' and offers practical, actionable 2 page tips in the form of elaborated aphorisms (did that sentence make it any clearer how this book is organised?). Almost all the tips heavily lean on agile, scrum, lean, kanban theory and I think that is the strength but also the weakness of the book. The strength is that if you're familiar with agile concepts, the tips in the book work like a trigger. The weakness is that if you're NOT familiar with agile concepts, it's easy to misinterpret the tips or apply them in the wrong context.
Highly recommended but only if you are familiar with the agile thing (or you could use this book as your entry into the agile world). I would distributed these freely among my team / institute / organisation / whatever if I were in any position of influence.
Highly recommended but only if you are familiar with the agile thing (or you could use this book as your entry into the agile world). I would distributed these freely among my team / institute / organisation / whatever if I were in any position of influence.
June 29, 2011
First of all, you can read this for yourself, online, for free. That spoke to me... Here's the link:
http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php...
This book is written by the software development team that built Basecamp, Backpack, and Campfire. They are successful, opinionated, and have soom good ideas. Now their business is software development, which is different from instructional design, but it is on some ways analogous. Both involve creativity and technical expertise, teams, budgets and typically short time lines.
Part of the appeal of this book is that the essays are short, pithy and keep things real. I am looking forward to their new book called Rework which is coming out early in March 2010.
Best ideas gleaned from the book:
Small teams: 3 people on a project
Meetings are toxic
Keeping large chunks of quiet time available for working
http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php...
This book is written by the software development team that built Basecamp, Backpack, and Campfire. They are successful, opinionated, and have soom good ideas. Now their business is software development, which is different from instructional design, but it is on some ways analogous. Both involve creativity and technical expertise, teams, budgets and typically short time lines.
Part of the appeal of this book is that the essays are short, pithy and keep things real. I am looking forward to their new book called Rework which is coming out early in March 2010.
Best ideas gleaned from the book:
Small teams: 3 people on a project
Meetings are toxic
Keeping large chunks of quiet time available for working
January 17, 2015
Very quick read, but not a particularly good one. The advice is extremely simplistic, bordering on platitudes, and much of it is not particularly actionable. A lot of it simply does not apply to *many* companies: e.g. building for yourself is all it takes to find a market (tell that to the many engineers who built something that *only* they would want), everything can be self-funded (many business cannot), everyone should give away all of their data for free (unless, of course, data is your differentiator, which it is for many companies).
It's not all bad, of course. The advice on design is actually quite good, mostly because it sticks with very concrete details: e.g. avoid too many preferences/settings in an app, design for regular, blank, and error states, copywriting is part of the design, and that your app has a voice. And some of the quotes from third parties are decent too.
Overall, there is some good stuff in this book, but it doesn't do a very good job of presenting it.
Some quotes that I liked:
Build half a product, not a half-ass product
The best designers and the best programmers aren’t the ones with the best skills, or the nimblest fingers, or the ones who can rock and roll with Photoshop or their environment of choice, they are the ones that can determine what just doesn’t matter. That’s where the real gains are made. Most of the time you spend is wasted on things that just don’t matter. If you can cut out the work and thinking that just don’t matter, you’ll achieve productivity you’ve never imagined.
Another reason to design first is that the interface is your product. What people see is what you’re selling. If you just slap an interface on at the end, the gaps will show.
Design for regular, blank, and error states.
The customer decides if an application is worthy at this blank slate stage – the stage when there’s the least amount of information, design, and content on which to judge the overall usefulness of the application. When you fail to design an adequate blank slate, people don’t know what they are missing because everything is missing.
Copywriting is interface design. Great interfaces are written. If you think every pixel, every icon, every typeface matters, then you also need to believe every letter matters.
Encourage programmers to make counteroffers.You want to hear: “The way you suggested will take 12 hours. But there’s a way I can do it that will only take one hour. It won’t do x but it will do y.”
Lorem ipsum changes the way copy is viewed. It reduces text-based content to a visual design element – a shape of text – instead of what it should be: valuable information someone is going to have to enter and/or read. Dummy text means you won’t see the inevitable variations that show up once real information is entered. It means you won’t know what it’s like to fill out forms on your site. Dummy text is a veil between you and reality.
Think of your product as a person. What type of person do you want it to be? Polite? Stern? Forgiving? Strict? Funny? Deadpan? Serious? Loose? Do you want to come off as paranoid or trust- ing? As a know-it-all? Or modest and likable? Once you decide, always keep those personality traits in mind as the product is built. Use them to guide the copywriting, the interface, and the feature set. Whenever you make a change, ask yourself if that change fits your app’s personality. Your product has a voice – and it’s talking to your customers 24 hours a day.
It's not all bad, of course. The advice on design is actually quite good, mostly because it sticks with very concrete details: e.g. avoid too many preferences/settings in an app, design for regular, blank, and error states, copywriting is part of the design, and that your app has a voice. And some of the quotes from third parties are decent too.
Overall, there is some good stuff in this book, but it doesn't do a very good job of presenting it.
Some quotes that I liked:
Build half a product, not a half-ass product
The best designers and the best programmers aren’t the ones with the best skills, or the nimblest fingers, or the ones who can rock and roll with Photoshop or their environment of choice, they are the ones that can determine what just doesn’t matter. That’s where the real gains are made. Most of the time you spend is wasted on things that just don’t matter. If you can cut out the work and thinking that just don’t matter, you’ll achieve productivity you’ve never imagined.
Another reason to design first is that the interface is your product. What people see is what you’re selling. If you just slap an interface on at the end, the gaps will show.
Design for regular, blank, and error states.
The customer decides if an application is worthy at this blank slate stage – the stage when there’s the least amount of information, design, and content on which to judge the overall usefulness of the application. When you fail to design an adequate blank slate, people don’t know what they are missing because everything is missing.
Copywriting is interface design. Great interfaces are written. If you think every pixel, every icon, every typeface matters, then you also need to believe every letter matters.
Encourage programmers to make counteroffers.You want to hear: “The way you suggested will take 12 hours. But there’s a way I can do it that will only take one hour. It won’t do x but it will do y.”
Lorem ipsum changes the way copy is viewed. It reduces text-based content to a visual design element – a shape of text – instead of what it should be: valuable information someone is going to have to enter and/or read. Dummy text means you won’t see the inevitable variations that show up once real information is entered. It means you won’t know what it’s like to fill out forms on your site. Dummy text is a veil between you and reality.
Think of your product as a person. What type of person do you want it to be? Polite? Stern? Forgiving? Strict? Funny? Deadpan? Serious? Loose? Do you want to come off as paranoid or trust- ing? As a know-it-all? Or modest and likable? Once you decide, always keep those personality traits in mind as the product is built. Use them to guide the copywriting, the interface, and the feature set. Whenever you make a change, ask yourself if that change fits your app’s personality. Your product has a voice – and it’s talking to your customers 24 hours a day.
Currently reading
February 19, 2016Good
October 17, 2018
This was a good introduction to building a product, quick and insightful read.
November 1, 2018
A good book which highlights the traditional rubbish (eg. never ending meeting, paperwork and so on) and points out how to overcome them based on their experience when it comes to build a web application.
September 5, 2016
That was just awesome. It is really helpful in "getting real" with your ideas to turn them into project. I loved how honest Jason is about all steps that might come up. I also loved the quotes mentioned, they all refer to good books/articles.
February 18, 2021
This book is for very very small Niche of Entrepreneurs.
If you are an Entrepreneur and you don't want to take funding. If you are an Entrepreneur and want to remain small. If you are an Entrepreneur and you work in the software industry. If you are an Entrepreneur who does not believe in outsourcing and if you are an Entrepreneur and you believe in deliberately staying small. If you are an Entrepreneur and you believe in Bootstratpping and DIY as opposed to finding the experts to do something. So this book is immediately not applicable to 99 percent of the businesses in the market. If you are an Entrepreneur and you exclusively work with products and abhor services. So there are so many IFs before the content in the book becomes applicable to you.
These kinds of firms do exist, but they are extremely rare, because this kind of existence is akin to daily circus. There will never be order, and you will keep building while running in a tight budget and with throat slitting deadlines.
I know of friends who own such companies, and work in such companies which deliberately resist scaling up or growing big. They are paranoid about losing control and are really careful about taking other people's money.
There are two great sins in this world 1. Avoidable Suffering and 2. Unrealized potential
The founder of 37 signals have committed both of these capital mistakes.
1. They cause great suffering not only to themselves but also to their employees and their customers.
They cause great suffering to themselves since they have to keep learning eternally, i.e. they spend most of their times putting out trivial fires that does not deserve their attention. By refusing to specialize or outsource, they take it upon themselves to DIY everything, which means that they end up doing a lot of maintenance work, so much for Comparative advantage. The Employees also suffer due to lack of specialization of any kind. They would end up becoming generalists, jack of all trades and master of none, and thus actually end up delivering products that eat up all their time and also make them lose their peace. Finally the customers suffer, for there are a lot of features that won't be ever implemented, since the founders are short of time.
2. When founders deliberately keep their operations small, what they don't understand is that they lose the ability to work on great ideas. The scope of ideas they can work with diminishes drastically. They are left with very few silly and trivial problems to solve. Small companies unfortunately can only solve small problems. Thus these companies lose golden opportunities by limiting themselves. One example is Craigslist, by deliberately trying to do less they have let go of the incredible niche that they have created. At one end we see, companies trying to scale globally with Blitzscaling strategies to serve millions and billions of customers and on the other hand we see these companies which deliberately remain small, due to myriad of trivial reasons.
This deliberate attempt to control growth reminds me of Bonsai Trees, where the growth is deliberately stunted. Getting real is a deliberate attempt to suppress growth, this is as dangerous as injecting steroids (huge capital) into the product to force growth artificially. Deliberately destroying organic growth under the guise of keeping things simple is absurd.
This book is only for such audience who want perfect control and obsess over keeping small and manageable as opposed to exploiting the full range of opportunities they have at their disposal.
There is another book which deals with similar genre, SMALL GIANTS, a book that has a collection of all the firms that have made a deliberate choice to remain small as opposed to grow to realize their full potential.
The book itself is extremely useful, though the underlying theme is
Here is a list of Books that were mentioned in this work.
Getting Real
Elements of style
The pragmatic programmer
Signal vs noise
Be a better liar
Less is more - jump starting productivity with small teams
Why software is the way it is
Make mantra 16 ignored details - guy kawasaki
Scaling up in startup’s - abasanjo
Free software and good user interfaces havoc pennington
Agile web development with rails
The productivity and software guide - life hacker, Gina tripani
Don’t let meetings rule - Lisa heinberg
How to find and keep the perfect VA
Defensive design for the web
Church of the customer blog
What is customer Evangelism
If you are an Entrepreneur and you don't want to take funding. If you are an Entrepreneur and want to remain small. If you are an Entrepreneur and you work in the software industry. If you are an Entrepreneur who does not believe in outsourcing and if you are an Entrepreneur and you believe in deliberately staying small. If you are an Entrepreneur and you believe in Bootstratpping and DIY as opposed to finding the experts to do something. So this book is immediately not applicable to 99 percent of the businesses in the market. If you are an Entrepreneur and you exclusively work with products and abhor services. So there are so many IFs before the content in the book becomes applicable to you.
These kinds of firms do exist, but they are extremely rare, because this kind of existence is akin to daily circus. There will never be order, and you will keep building while running in a tight budget and with throat slitting deadlines.
I know of friends who own such companies, and work in such companies which deliberately resist scaling up or growing big. They are paranoid about losing control and are really careful about taking other people's money.
There are two great sins in this world 1. Avoidable Suffering and 2. Unrealized potential
The founder of 37 signals have committed both of these capital mistakes.
1. They cause great suffering not only to themselves but also to their employees and their customers.
They cause great suffering to themselves since they have to keep learning eternally, i.e. they spend most of their times putting out trivial fires that does not deserve their attention. By refusing to specialize or outsource, they take it upon themselves to DIY everything, which means that they end up doing a lot of maintenance work, so much for Comparative advantage. The Employees also suffer due to lack of specialization of any kind. They would end up becoming generalists, jack of all trades and master of none, and thus actually end up delivering products that eat up all their time and also make them lose their peace. Finally the customers suffer, for there are a lot of features that won't be ever implemented, since the founders are short of time.
2. When founders deliberately keep their operations small, what they don't understand is that they lose the ability to work on great ideas. The scope of ideas they can work with diminishes drastically. They are left with very few silly and trivial problems to solve. Small companies unfortunately can only solve small problems. Thus these companies lose golden opportunities by limiting themselves. One example is Craigslist, by deliberately trying to do less they have let go of the incredible niche that they have created. At one end we see, companies trying to scale globally with Blitzscaling strategies to serve millions and billions of customers and on the other hand we see these companies which deliberately remain small, due to myriad of trivial reasons.
This deliberate attempt to control growth reminds me of Bonsai Trees, where the growth is deliberately stunted. Getting real is a deliberate attempt to suppress growth, this is as dangerous as injecting steroids (huge capital) into the product to force growth artificially. Deliberately destroying organic growth under the guise of keeping things simple is absurd.
This book is only for such audience who want perfect control and obsess over keeping small and manageable as opposed to exploiting the full range of opportunities they have at their disposal.
There is another book which deals with similar genre, SMALL GIANTS, a book that has a collection of all the firms that have made a deliberate choice to remain small as opposed to grow to realize their full potential.
The book itself is extremely useful, though the underlying theme is
Here is a list of Books that were mentioned in this work.
Getting Real
Elements of style
The pragmatic programmer
Signal vs noise
Be a better liar
Less is more - jump starting productivity with small teams
Why software is the way it is
Make mantra 16 ignored details - guy kawasaki
Scaling up in startup’s - abasanjo
Free software and good user interfaces havoc pennington
Agile web development with rails
The productivity and software guide - life hacker, Gina tripani
Don’t let meetings rule - Lisa heinberg
How to find and keep the perfect VA
Defensive design for the web
Church of the customer blog
What is customer Evangelism
November 16, 2023
Quick read full of straightforward advice. Most of it was probably transformative in 2006 when the book came out, but nothing to groundbreaking nowadays (basically just variations of “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”).
October 5, 2009
An "agile" project management methodology and a general guide for start ups from the original developers of Ruby on Rails. Short and very well written in plain language. Some of it breaks sharply with conventional project management, but for many projects (especially web projects) ... I think there is a lot of wisdom in this guide.
A few highlights:
- "Functional specs force you to make the most important decisions when you have the least information" ... so keep specs extremely simple, develop in iterations, and develop in ways that makes change easy
- "Go from brainstorm to sketches to HTML to coding" ... in that order
- "Prevent excess paperwork everywhere." "Build, don't write. If you need to explain something, try mocking it up and prototyping it rather than writing a longwinded document. An actual interface or prototype is on its way to becoming a real product."
- "Accept that mistakes will happen and realize it's no big deal as long as you can correct them quickly" ... the premise being that if your risk tolerance can be a little higher, then you can cut time and costs significantly
- Keep your team small and each version of your project small. Rigorously guard against non-essential features
- "Meetings are toxic." Favor emails and IM over meetings
- Make developers do their own tech support ("feel the pain")
Available for free online at:
http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc....
A few highlights:
- "Functional specs force you to make the most important decisions when you have the least information" ... so keep specs extremely simple, develop in iterations, and develop in ways that makes change easy
- "Go from brainstorm to sketches to HTML to coding" ... in that order
- "Prevent excess paperwork everywhere." "Build, don't write. If you need to explain something, try mocking it up and prototyping it rather than writing a longwinded document. An actual interface or prototype is on its way to becoming a real product."
- "Accept that mistakes will happen and realize it's no big deal as long as you can correct them quickly" ... the premise being that if your risk tolerance can be a little higher, then you can cut time and costs significantly
- Keep your team small and each version of your project small. Rigorously guard against non-essential features
- "Meetings are toxic." Favor emails and IM over meetings
- Make developers do their own tech support ("feel the pain")
Available for free online at:
http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc....
December 30, 2020
An excellent handbook full of simple guidelines to build and maintain simple and quality products. It's crazy that a 14-year-old book is still so relevant today, especially in such a fast-paced industry.
March 9, 2022
37 Signals take on how to do business and build products (particularly web software products). Sanctimonious, but it works.
October 2, 2020
بعد أن تكرر على مسامعي ورود وصف هذا الكتاب ك" الكتاب المقدس" في مجال تطوير مواقع الوب، والذي هو مجال أساسي في هندسة البرمجيات، لم أستطع الصبر إلا وقراءة هذه الكتاب كوني من المؤمنين المتعصبين لكل ما له علاقة في مجالي. وإذ أجد نفسي أقرأ كتاباً في التنمية البشرية!
إن أكثر ما يثير استيائي من هذا العصر سواءً في العمل أو في مجالات الحياة جميعها هي السباق المميت مع الوقت، وكنت دائماً ما أسمي عصرنا بعصر الاستعجال وليس عصر السرعة. وهذا تماماً ما يرد في الكتاب. أن يتخلى كل اختصاصي عن كل ما يعيق سرعته سواء كتخطيط أو عمل أو حتى تفكير!
ملخص الكتاب: افعل أي شيء يمكنك القيام به بأسرع وقت ممكن
لقد أفقد هذا الاستعجال متعة العمل الهندسي وحجّم الفكر العملي والتحليلي إلى رؤية انتاجية ربحية تبقى على المحكّ إن لم تسبق غيرك.
رسالتي إلى كل مهندس يقرأ هذا الكتاب، إن مهمتنا كمهندسين منتجين للعلم وليس مستهلكين هي استخدام الفكر التحليلي من أجل اتخاذ القرار المناسب في وضع استراتيجية العمل، والموضوع يحتاج إلى خبرة وقرار ومنطق. من غير المقبول تقديس أي استراتيجية في عملنا، لأن لكل حالة وضعها الخاص ولا يوجد قياس واحد. وهنا يأتي تميز قرار عن قرار.
كان لا بد لهذا الكتاب أن يثير إعجابي بطريقة جيدة لو أنه لم يضع نفسه بالمقارنة مع العلم والفكر الهندسي المتعصبة له بشكل كبير، والذي لا شك بأنه كان السبب لوصولنا إلى التقدم التكنولوجي بل والاجتماعي الحالي الذي نعيشه.
إن أكثر ما يثير استيائي من هذا العصر سواءً في العمل أو في مجالات الحياة جميعها هي السباق المميت مع الوقت، وكنت دائماً ما أسمي عصرنا بعصر الاستعجال وليس عصر السرعة. وهذا تماماً ما يرد في الكتاب. أن يتخلى كل اختصاصي عن كل ما يعيق سرعته سواء كتخطيط أو عمل أو حتى تفكير!
ملخص الكتاب: افعل أي شيء يمكنك القيام به بأسرع وقت ممكن
لقد أفقد هذا الاستعجال متعة العمل الهندسي وحجّم الفكر العملي والتحليلي إلى رؤية انتاجية ربحية تبقى على المحكّ إن لم تسبق غيرك.
رسالتي إلى كل مهندس يقرأ هذا الكتاب، إن مهمتنا كمهندسين منتجين للعلم وليس مستهلكين هي استخدام الفكر التحليلي من أجل اتخاذ القرار المناسب في وضع استراتيجية العمل، والموضوع يحتاج إلى خبرة وقرار ومنطق. من غير المقبول تقديس أي استراتيجية في عملنا، لأن لكل حالة وضعها الخاص ولا يوجد قياس واحد. وهنا يأتي تميز قرار عن قرار.
كان لا بد لهذا الكتاب أن يثير إعجابي بطريقة جيدة لو أنه لم يضع نفسه بالمقارنة مع العلم والفكر الهندسي المتعصبة له بشكل كبير، والذي لا شك بأنه كان السبب لوصولنا إلى التقدم التكنولوجي بل والاجتماعي الحالي الذي نعيشه.
October 29, 2017
One of the books that every software professional should read regardless of their role. "Less is more" the mantra repeated throughout the book along with the techniques to achieve the same by keeping things simple and small.
December 10, 2018
If you're already reading info from other small entrepreneurs, then the content of this book is not very surprising. It's solid advice for anyone interested in staying small and focused in software business.
Read
December 14, 2023Had to read this for work & it was fine, I'm just adding it here because it contributes to me being an additional 5% above my reading goal for the year
February 3, 2020
Getting Real is not just for web but for any kind of product for which you have an opportunity to build in agile. this guide would evolve your insights to develop minimal and more realistic product.
November 3, 2020
Overall a nice guide for building saas products. I wish I would have read this before my first launch. It did provide a simplistic view but it's not always that straight forward.
In case you are building new saas business - go and read this.
In case you are building new saas business - go and read this.
June 19, 2018
This book was written back in 2006, before Agile and Scrum and other frameworks really took off and gained popularity. The team behind it were called 37signals at the time, now they are just caled Basecamp - named after their most popular product.
With that in mind, I was totally surprised at how readable and enjoyable this book still is 12 years after its publication. That is no small feat in the field of digital product development.
The book is written like a manifest with very short chapters (some of them only one page) and in clear-cut language. There is no messing about here - and no grey zones as well. As I said, think of it as a manifest. And in some places as a manual.
One of the main points in the book is "start small and scale later" - and as someone who is almost obsessed with scale and making things scalable, I needed to read this book :)
The sub-title of the book is "The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application" but I would recommend reading it even if you don't work with building web applications. What has happened since 2006 is that some of the methods from programming and technical development have spread to all digital development.
So, if you are involved in product development (and/or building, obviously) make sure you read this book. It's like a bag of candy; you don't really want it to stop.
If you're interested, you can get a free PDF copy of 'Getting Real' by signing up for the Basecamp newsletter: https://basecamp.com/books/getting-real
With that in mind, I was totally surprised at how readable and enjoyable this book still is 12 years after its publication. That is no small feat in the field of digital product development.
The book is written like a manifest with very short chapters (some of them only one page) and in clear-cut language. There is no messing about here - and no grey zones as well. As I said, think of it as a manifest. And in some places as a manual.
One of the main points in the book is "start small and scale later" - and as someone who is almost obsessed with scale and making things scalable, I needed to read this book :)
The sub-title of the book is "The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application" but I would recommend reading it even if you don't work with building web applications. What has happened since 2006 is that some of the methods from programming and technical development have spread to all digital development.
So, if you are involved in product development (and/or building, obviously) make sure you read this book. It's like a bag of candy; you don't really want it to stop.
If you're interested, you can get a free PDF copy of 'Getting Real' by signing up for the Basecamp newsletter: https://basecamp.com/books/getting-real
February 15, 2013
Given you never read Rework or the $100 startup and you're not familiar to scrum or eXtreme Programming practices, only then this book will inspire you and open your eyes. Otherwise it's a nice rehash but there's nothing new under the sun. Scratch your own itch, meetings are toxic, release early and often, watch out for code complexity, ... - some things are literally found again in "Rework", but I did read Rework first so I might lower that rating too ;-)
It's quite a quick read and that's a good thing. Every time you're struck on something, it's nice to flip through the table of contents, but nothing more.
It's quite a quick read and that's a good thing. Every time you're struck on something, it's nice to flip through the table of contents, but nothing more.
June 10, 2014
This book is worth its weight in gold. Simply put, it is all business. Each chapter is crafted in digestible, highly valuable chunks. It's free of fluff and business jargon, which is unlike most business books out there that basically say the same thing in a thousand different ways.
Internet/software entrepreneurs will appreciate this book more than folks in corporate environments, but we could all learn a lot from the tips it shares. Highly recommend!
Internet/software entrepreneurs will appreciate this book more than folks in corporate environments, but we could all learn a lot from the tips it shares. Highly recommend!
March 26, 2010
Great ideas - although I'm not a web designer - many of the ideas apply to what I do - corporate training. Basically - do more, think about doing more a lot less. I 100% agree - more and more I feel like I'm documenting what I'm going to do, meeting about what I'm going to do, and telling managers what I'm going to do than I get time to do it! :) This book is ammo to stop doing that!
December 9, 2013
It's a really interesting book, if you understand that it's the 37Signals perspective and there are some things that could work for you and other that couldn't.
It's not just for the "entrepreneur", but for anybody who wants to push his/her work to a new level without (and I think this is one of the most important attributes of the book) all the "entrepreneur crap" you usually get everywhere
It's not just for the "entrepreneur", but for anybody who wants to push his/her work to a new level without (and I think this is one of the most important attributes of the book) all the "entrepreneur crap" you usually get everywhere
July 1, 2011
الكتاب مناسب لك إذا كنت تفكر بتطوير تطبيق على الانترنت. يعرض لك فلسفة لشركة متميزة في تطوير تطبيقات الويب، و هي مختلفة تماماً عن الفلسفة التي تعلمتها في هندسة البرمجيات.. قرأت النسخة المتوفرة على الموقع "http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php" .. الكتاب ممتاز و متوفر أيضاً باللغة العربية
September 15, 2013
Getting Real is about programming. And in my view, it was also about life and common-sense.
I would highly recommend it to anybody interested in programming (of any kind) and those who want to develop something bigger in this direction.
Light read and condensed good pieces of advice.
I would highly recommend it to anybody interested in programming (of any kind) and those who want to develop something bigger in this direction.
Light read and condensed good pieces of advice.
July 6, 2022
Nice little read. It's a collection of separate ideas that have been uncovered through trial and error whilst building web products. I can see how these ideas would be immediately applicable in the context of a smaller team.
February 7, 2007
good book...quick read...very in line with my way of thinking about startups (move quickly, etc.)
July 7, 2010
Easy to read , Easy to understand - to the point !
October 9, 2014
The better, faster, no BS way to build a web application.
January 3, 2017
Перечитую вже вкотре і завжди круто.
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