Looking for Skillfulness - Dreaming in Code

Just finished Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg. Fascinating book - well written, with some very interesting things to say.

For those of you who haven't read it - read it. It's a great introduction to both the very difficult problems of building large software systems, and also to a lot of the ideas try to alleviate those difficulties. Moreover, Scott doesn't have an ax to grind, or a vision he's trying to prosteletize - so it seems to provide a reliable, unbiased survey of the best thinking out there.

Frankly, I got very inspired reading it. Not about any particular solution, because I too think that there is no silver bullet, but about the idea that we can come up with an toolbox of approaches for dealing with this issue, and perhaps come up with some common core concerns, that will help guide us down any software project. What it comes down to, I think, is not developing better methodologies or programming languages (although these help) but rather developing better skills. Finding out what those skills are, and honing them.

Skillful software is an exploration of that - and a record of my experiences as I try to test these ideas in the field, so to speak.