Fiction: The Agile Truth?
It is said that truth is stranger than fiction, but fiction, after all, is the amalgamation of diced, disembodied truths neatly concatenated to form Frankensteinian alternate reality.
Like the curiously segmented children's flip-book, the writer splices the forehead, nose, and mouth of dramatically different faces to form a startling, but amusing, monster. Fiction liberates and empowers, unfettered by constraints of geography, gender, age, or occupation.
Fiction is the refactored, agile truth, augmented with third-party plug-ins, debugged, and recompiled.
Dredged from the bowels of software development, scraped from the shoes of code-spewing veterans, technology truth searches for a voice like a headless specter swinging a lantern on the railroad of methodologies. With the friendly anonymity of fiction, pearls of perceived software development wisdom can be scattered along with the swine leavings of project failures and analyzed without the unflattering spotlight of accountability.
Software developers are like Dickens characters in our collective diversity, from introverted code-mongers to gregarious, mutual friends, living out the best and worst of times on the center stage of technology. We are proud and prejudiced for or against Microsoft, but generally toward are own competencies. We are software sleuths, following a tenuous trail of coding clues to solve modern mysteries traced in transient chalk on the pavement of progress.
I have long been interested in software development fiction as a form of edutainment, having enjoyed Tom DeMarco's The Deadline, but wanting more. I will refrain from identifying precisely which Developer.* blogger unwittingly inspired this particular foray into the genre. His eclectic rants and rhetoric simultaneously confounded, amused, and impressed. I actually toyed with the notion of suggesting that he offer up his considerable talent on the altar of my fictional cravings, but feared I might be pegged as the borderline software schizophrenic that I probably am. To say that he inspired the concept or a particular character is to say that his blogging served as psycho-kinetic springboard, not that his essence will be accurately reflected or recognizable. Perhaps, with any fortune, the inspiration will be reciprocal and we will yet enjoy his novel approach to software development.
I hope that these ramblings have intrigued you just a little. Tomorrow I will post chapter 1 in A Scandal in Software (I'm not married to that title). Perhaps you can peruse it on company time and claim with some element of clear-conscience that it's work-related?
My intention is to post a new chapter on a weekly basis, but that will likely depend on its reception. I realize we're all practically blind from reading ubiquitous specifications and procedures, and I wouldn't want to burden anyone's mental inbox unless you can derive some pleasure from it. I hope that you can find yourself somewhere in the pages, and are provoked to chuckle, scoff, or nod along the way. At least the price is right. (Editor's note: here is the the completed online book.)
To the developer.* international readership, the site editor has explained to me that the use of pop culture references and curious slang can make translation difficult. I apologize. I can only imagine how some of this must come across if translated literally. Yet, I cannot find it within myself to apply a flat-iron to the frizz that is my writing style. I hope you understand and take it as a challenge to your language skills. Personally, despite the fact that I took any number of French courses in high school and college, I am only able to stutter along with phrases that are tributes to my incompetence, such as Je sais pas (spoken with an eastern North Carolina drawl) so I am in awe of lingual ambidexterity.
In case you're inclined to respond:
1. Do you have any interest in the blending of story with software development culture, or do you prefer to keep your entertainment and technical material in a segmented plate so the juices never mingle?
2. Do you ever download reading material to an electronic reading device? (Personally, I still have a working Rocketbook by the defunct Nuvomedia and an RCA ebook and even a Franklin ebookman. I haven't yet bothered downloading text to a PDA. I must have been one of the few happy consumers of these products. Contemporary publications were generally too expensive to tempt, but it was great for public domain and home grown material.)
3. Are you faithful to one book until it is finished, or are you a polygamous reader, like me, with a dozen or so books stacked by your bed in varying states of completion?
Fiction
The "cyber-thriller" seems to be pretty much passé as far as contemporary pop culture goes. Of course, many other types of thrillers (especially the quasai-comic book thriller) are alive and well, and I think that much more could be done with a computer/software development related thriller than has so far been achieved. In movies you've got basically the Net (from like, 1995!) and that's about it. Some might want to count the Matrix, but the computer angle was really more of a comic-book-esque high concept that allowed for freaky virtual fighting. This is all my round-about way of saying "go for it."
Posting a chapter a week, as you write, is certainly ambitious and daring. I don't know if I could ever be so bold.
Dan, regarding Passport, last I checked, that initiative was alive and well and M$ was continuing to push it. As for e-books, I think that idea is dead--at least for now. I have not heard anyone singing the praises of the e-book in quite some time. I think you can actually still buy an e-book on Amazon, but why anyone would want to is beyond me.
Fiction
Rob, I agree that I was never tempted to pay full price for an e-book that I couldn't share with anyone else -- especially when I felt like *some* of the publication cost should have been spared and passed on to the consumer/reader; however, it was incredible for night reading, especially...and fabulous for taking on flights. You could load it up with 100 books, but not feel the weight of 100 books on your shoulder. Yes, I've rather accepted it failed, but I just think it was handled poorly. I think we'll live to see the concept revisited with more sensible marketing eventually.
As far as fiction is concerned, I am afraid the examples you mentioned, The Net, and The Matrix, have a lot more cross-over appeal than what I had in mind. Maybe my ramblings will be too low-key for a predominately male (and probably fairly young) audience. The first chapter is inherently slower as it sets up the characters with backgroun, but I fear it will never be what could be contrued as a thriller.
Speaking of books, dare I say that I have been listening to the audiobook edition of The Da Vinci Code? I'm on CD 9 of about 13 and am up to chapter 60-something! I read some of the reviews on BN and Amazon and was amazed at the heated opinions. It is fiction, by George! I suppose whenever you dance a little too closely to real people (especially Deity) and real events, you'll tango into trouble.
It was a dark and stormy night
...suddenly, a shot rang out. Dr. Rotwang was discovered by his assistant, Ygor, slumped over his PC.
When Ygor saw the mysterious and forbidding compound If statement on the blood-bespattered screen, Ygor, who was already a few noodles short of of a Happy Bowl, went truly mad, and was later seen howling at the moon on the blasted heath outside Dr. Rotwang's hovel.
When Dr. Holmes and I were summoned by the land-lady, an aged Belgian crone of uncertain years and loose morals, Holmes sat long before the mysterious and forbidding If statement on Dr. Rotwang's screen.
"I say, Watson, the mystery here is not the Then clause. That is obvious. For if this If statement were ever true, in any possible world, then clearly you would need to execute the instruction in microcode SHUTDOWN immediately to spare the user from implosion: for the If statement is testing an attached microcontroller to see if a black hole has been created."
"The question is the Else clause: for clearly, Dr. Rotwang has devised a way of colliding elementary particles to create an illimitable source of energy. What we do not know is how he plans to reduce that source to alternating current".
...to be continued?
Dark and Stormy words
Ah, I am fed at last...but I digest quickly. Perhaps my work here is done. I hope you will continue...unless your talent is reserved for higher purpose. I expect your followers would be pleased. Recently I ran across a fellow's website randomly...something with Insomniac in the title...and he was essentially begging Edward Nilges to write more, quoting a particularly clever morsel or two.
That's Bill Ryan, MVP and a hell of a guy, Donna
He liked my book and compared it to the Divine Comedy:
Nel mezzo del camin de nostra vita
I came to my senses in front of the screen
For I had lost the true way
He's quite a guy, another programmer who kin write gude.
Coder to Developer and Coding Slave
I was searching for books on Amazon and came across Coder to Developer by Mike Gunderloy, which I plan to buy because it looks good, (though it isn't fiction.) However, Amazon suggested I might also be interested in Coding Slave by Bob Reselman, newTech Press, Feb 2004. It appears to be a foray into software development fiction, and oh, the scathing reviews! Could it really be so bad? Has anyone read it? One reviewer (out of many others with opposite views) said kind words, suggesting, "Forget it's a novel and you'll love it." Puzzling. Am I willing to plunk down $11.01 to satisfy my curiosity? Those of you who've actually published real books, is it hard to take the rotten tomatoes thrown in your face?
Technical Fiction
Hi, Donna I'm excited about your idea to post a serialization of in-progress software development fiction. I'm looking forward to the first chapter. Hopefully others will check it out also and provide some good feedback as it progresses.
[quote="Donna L. Davis"]1. Do you have any interest in the blending of story with software development culture, or do you prefer to keep your entertainment and technical material in a segmented plate so the juices never mingle?[/quote]
I have not had the pleasure of reading DeMarco's "project management novel" The Deadline, but the idea of a crossover between software development and fiction has always intrigued me. In particular, I like your idea of mixing it with crime/mystery fiction.
[quote="Donna L. Davis"]2. Do you ever download reading material to an electronic reading device? (Personally, I still have a working Rocketbook by the defunct Nuvomedia and an RCA ebook and even a Franklin ebookman. I haven’t yet bothered downloading text to a PDA. I must have been one of the few happy consumers of these products. Contemporary publications were generally too expensive to tempt, but it was great for public domain and home grown material.)[/quote]
I've not tried doing this with an actual reader device. At one time I did look into publishing developer.* articles in an ebook format, but did not get very far. As I remember, there was not good tool support for a publisher such as myself. I also remember trying out the Microsoft Reader technology but when I saw that you could not even use the Reader software without getting a Passport, I stopped going in that direction on principle (are they still using that stupid Passport technology?). Perhaps enough time has passed that it would be worth looking into ebooks again. And please let me know if you would like any assistance making your fiction serial available on the developer.* site in any other formats.
[quote="Donna L. Davis"]3. Are you faithful to one book until it is finished, or are you a polygamous reader, like me, with a dozen or so books stacked by your bed in varying states of completion?[/quote]
I tend to go one book at a time with my fiction, but with nonfiction I'm like you, reading up to a dozen nonfiction books simultaneously.
Dan