What This Book Is About

This book is for software developers who want to make better things in better ways.

It covers all aspects of software development, from tiny details of code all the way up to team structure, project management, and user experience design.

If you are interested in making software that is kinder, sturdier, more deeply felt, and better fit to your hand, eye, and mind, this book is for you.

If you just want to feel less stressed at work, I think you'll also find something of value here.

This book will give you:

• Better views: more realistic, useful, and humane ways of seeing the systems we inhabit.
• Better techniques: ways of working that provide ease, efficiency, and control.
• Generative principles that help you invent new techniques to fit your situation.

...all in service of providing mutually beneficial goods to you, your clients, your teammates, and the users of your software:

• Software that does what you meant it to do,
• that is satisfying to work on
• and can be improved at a steady, predictable pace,
• profitably,
• forever.

Why "Process to Processes?"

The title of this book refers to the two kinds of process that bookend software development. On one end, we have the development process that people go through as they learn about the system, make changes, and observe the results. On the other end, we have the computational processes that run on computers—the things that are listed by the ps command on Unix systems.

This book will give you a complete picture of what happens during software development. It maps paths that lead all the way from one "process" to the other—and back again.