Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application

by 37signals

Publisher: 37signals, LLC.
Copyright: © 2006 37signals, LLC. Standard Copyright License
Language: English
Country: United States
Edition: First Edition
  • Paperback book $25.00

Printed: 193 pages, 6" x 9", perfect binding, black and white interior ink

Description:

Getting Real details the business, design, programming, and marketing principles of 37signals. The book is packed with keep-it-simple insights, contrarian points of view, and unconventional approaches to software design. This is not a technical book or a design tutorial, it's a book of ideas. Anyone working on a web app — including entrepreneurs, designers, programmers, executives, or marketers — will find value and inspiration in this book. 37signals used the Getting Real process to launch five successful web-based applications (Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack, Writeboard, Ta-da List), and Ruby on Rails, an open-source web application framework, in just two years with no outside funding, no debt, and only 7 people (distributed across 7 time zones). Over 500,000 people around the world use these applications to get things done. Now you can find out how they did it and how you can do it too. It's not as hard as you think if you Get Real.


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18 votes
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Reviews:

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Use it to run a business [ No Rating ] 8 Nov 2007 (updated 8 Nov 2007)
This book is really great. If you have a small company to run day by day, it is the perfect choice to share a mantra and a method with your people. It works. I'm so enthusiastic about it, that I'm contributing a lot in translating it for free in Italian (http://gettingreal.37signals.com/GR_ita.php)
Inspiring book on keeping things simple [ No Rating ] 13 Jun 2007
by
I believe some of the main issues within corporations is their definition of what the core is of their business. This book inspires on bringing the fundamental ideas back to the basics. Launching applications fast, lightweight, and embracing "collective intelligence" from users.

Keeping it Real.....NAYM SAYIN.
Influential and inspiring book
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4 Dec 2006
This book was very helpful to me. I have found that you can readily apply it to any kind of project you might like to create. It is funny, fun, and embodies the spirit it espouses. Keep it simple. Get to the point. Have fun. It is about a way of creating things that keeps work fun, and gets products out fast, where they can be responded to by the actual users, and modified based on their feedback as required. Of all the business and marketing books I have read in the last year, this is one of the top ones. The only thing is: Don't assume it just applies to software! It doesn't.
Interesting, if deeply flawed [ No Rating ] 2 Dec 2006
37 Signals are regarded by many as being a very cool web application design company. In may ways, they are. But this book is as much as manifesto as a method, and you need to bear a number of basic facts in mind when reading it: primarily that the authors answer to nobody but themselves - they have no clients. While the book mentions this in passing, it's really an issue that's swept under the carpet. If you have a client, or are being contracted to produce software for a third party, many of the methods described in this book will ensure that you will never work for those people again. It's not difficult to work out what those bits are though so no mystery there.

But even if you are in the happy position of designing and building your own software for your own customers, you would be well to look at the results of 37 Signals's own work and ask yourself whether it's any better or worse than any other software. It would probably have been fun - not to say actually easy - to produce, but would it be better software to use?

I think that for all the iconoclasm of Getting Real, what 37 Signals actually produce (Basecamp, Ta-Da Lists, etc.) is not any better than other software of its type. But that's just my opinion. You should make that judgement for yourself after reading this book - and most of all bear in mind that some of what they are saying is more ideological than practical.

Excellent book! [ No Rating ] 28 Nov 2006 (updated 28 Nov 2006)
I just loved this book and read it in a manner of hours.

I like this book A TON because it contains excellent information about keeping it simple and at the same time offers tidbits of great inspiration and insight on almost every page.

If you are a developer, designer, and entrepreneur or simply want to be inspired to Get Real then I highly suggest you read this book, which is a quick read because they kept it simple.

The only negative is the use of some profanity which is always unnecessary.

Keep up the great work 37Signals and any other books you write I am sure to purchase!
Excellent book, except the TOC [ No Rating ] 9 Nov 2006
It is really an excellent book, gives alot of inspiration in doing the right thing. The only really anoying thing is that the TOC is not correct. The pagenumbers are incorrect, pointing to the wrong page.

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