When comparing Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed vs Rationality: From AI to Zombies, the Slant community recommends Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed for most people. In the question“What are the books outside the technology field that every developer should read?” Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed is ranked 6th while Rationality: From AI to Zombies is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed is:
Though not related to programming, a lot of the book's content is about delivering projects on time and on budget, prototyping to fail early, and putting people in the same room to aid communication.
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Pros
Pro Agile Development
Though not related to programming, a lot of the book's content is about delivering projects on time and on budget, prototyping to fail early, and putting people in the same room to aid communication.
Pro Will make you smarter
Your intelligence is being used to defeat itself. Learn how to stop that.
Pro Mindblowing ideas
From (friendly) AI to (philosophical) zombies. Also Pebblesorters. And why humans are insane.
Pro Fictional interludes
These are quality science fiction short stories in their own right.
Pro Funny
Pro Engaging
Cons
Con Not enough citations
Just Google it.
Con Has some highly technical references in places
Things like physics (relativity, quantum mechanics), mathematics and computer programming. Scared? Didn't think so.
Con Long
The chapters are relatively short and digestible essays and short stories. The problem: there are 333 of them. On paper, this would take volumes, but this is an ebook. You'll get a lot out of it long before you finish though.