The 37signals guys never rest: not only do they have five awesome Web apps in their stable, but they’ve written a new e-book to boot. Called Getting Real, it’s available for $19 as a PDF download, and I have read it in its entirety. Buy it. Now. (That is, if you plan on releasing a Web app or any piece of agile software.) It rocks.

Here’s what I wrote at the Signal vs. Noise blog:

I bought the book. I read it in three chunks today…only took around 2 1/2 hours total.

I got more out of reading this little e-book than just about any other computer-related book I’ve ever read on any topic that I can possibly think of. Whoa. I think you applied Getting Real to the book. And that’s fine — when I want verbose frills, I’l l read James Fenimore Cooper. When I want a brain supercharge, I’ll read something like this.

Way to go guys. Well worth every penny of the $19 I spent.

And lest you think I’m just a mindless Jason Fried or DHH fan or something, I used to be quite jealous of their company a couple of years ago when Basecamp first came out. I totally didn’t get it: I thought uncustomizable, hosted, pay-per-month Web software with a “childlike” simple interface was a complete joke. Boy was I wrong! I’m now a paying Backpack customer (And I do like Basecamp now, though I don’t use it.) The times they are a-changin’….

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 2nd, 2006 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Design Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.