Location: Ukraine
Member Since:
Feb. 13, 2011
Serhiy Yevtushenko
Smashwords book reviews by Serhiy Yevtushenko
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For the Love of Harmony
on Feb. 13, 2011
That's a nice short story about two people in love, on the brink of life-changing decision, being hindered by frequent differences that are threatening to became irreconcilable. The depiction of feelings, appearing during the conflict, would sound true to anyone who lived at least once in a family. The solution brings the "a-ha" feeling. Such a feeling usually comes after having worked hard to solve a complex problem, and then suddenly having found a simple solution resolving all issues ( It looks almost incredible - Why has it taken so long to find it?). The feeling that is left unresolved after reading the story is a desire to be able to know how to find such solutions in everyday life.
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Perfect Software and Other Illusions About Testing
on Feb. 19, 2011
This is a great book in many aspects. It allows to tie together many different aspects of testing. Reading the book gives an integrated picture of testing from many different viewpoints. The core take-aways for me were: - testing is first of all using a brain - testing is needed because people are human - testing is process of digging for information while having a limited time - quite a large amount of information about a product and development process could be gathered really quickly - process of testing is best driven by information obtained in the process of testing - significance of bugs is context dependent and many, many others The real gems for me were chapters 15 and 16: “Preventing testing from growing more difficult”, and “Testing without machinery”. Just these two chapters are well worth the book. So, I highly recommend the book. This is one of the best books of Jerry Weinberg
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Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method
on May 14, 2011
I have a mixed feeling about the book. The book is definitely good: it contains a wealth of valuable advice on how to write engaging books. At the same time, it has taken a fair amount of time to me to come up with review for this book. I have tried to apply the advice from the book, and write only, when I'm in the proper emotional state. It turned out pretty hard for me to find time and place, when I was in the good emotional state. Nevertheless, finally I managed to do so. So, what are the most valuable takeaways from the book for me: - process of writing a book is similar of gathering a lot of small stones, and building a wall from them - the main challenge is to accumulate enough of the stones - it's perfectly fine to gather stones for several projects/future use. The main thing is to keep making progress in at least one direction. Books contains as well good advice, on how to: - improve productivity in writing - glue & organize content together - gather ideas & assimilate ideas of others, without plagiarizing them - many ways to improve quality of written text - and many other things As well, one of the things that comes together with trying to apply this method is that good writing requires good work/life balance. Without it, it's pretty hard to apply fieldstone method – without having work/life balance it would be almost close to impossible to be in a good emotional state. Concerning different versions of books on smashwords: - I would not recommend using plain text-based version. Firstly, it misses photos, and secondly, there is one chapter, which is very hard to read in the plain – text version, due to lack of words formatting.