The first section of this book deals with generally useful stuff.
Chapter 1, "Beginning at the Beginning," introduces the subject of software development and my particular view of managing it. I include some thoughts on general management problem-solving.
This perspective is colored by my education and experience, so in Chapter 2, "Computational Roots," I take some time to further introduce myself. One of the themes of this chapter is that my roots in software development are deep in "computation"that is, I started out as a scientific programmer at a time when computer science was in its infancy, and my "basic training" was as an engineer.
In Chapter 3, "Mountaineering," I use a mountaineering metaphor for the software development project; I did some mountaineering as a young man and discovered that there were a lot of parallels between the two activities and the teams that undertake them.
In Chapter 4, "Managing," I talk about what a good manager does and does not do.
