raganwald
(This is a snapshot of my old weblog. New posts and selected republished essays can be found at raganwald.com.)

Wednesday, December 27, 2006
  Why Philip is a Member of the Group of Seven


Dossy was kind enough to link to this weblog. I tried posting a comment in reply to his post, but—alas—the OpenID login didn’t work and I couldn’t get past his weblog’s captcha.



(Ad: The most beautiful book ever written about writing web applications. Also available online for free.)
Here’s what I wanted to say:

Thanks for the link to The first seven books I would buy if my shelves were bare.

I’m curious: why are you surprised that Phil’s book is one of the seven?

I’ll try to explain my reasoning. I deliberately restricted my choices to books that I have returned to re-read many times over the years. I have flipped through “Philip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing” more than a few times since I first read it.

The technology choices are no longer popular, true. But the message, about simplicity and reliability, still resonates with me. I especially like his diatribe against “JunkWare”. In this era of enterprisey stacks like SOAP, perhaps his message is even more relevant than ever?
 

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Reg Braithwaite


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