The Programmer's Survival Guide: Career Strategies for Computer Professionals

This was a great, great book, but it is sadly out of date. Worth reading for the history, maybe, but it's not a career guide for today.

I wish I'd had this book 11+ years ago when I was first considering becoming a programmer. I don't know if my life would be any different, but at least maybe I'd understand better what was going on. Ruhl does a good job of describing the nitty-gritty realities of life as a programmer. why management doesn't like technical people, why a maintenance job might be a better choice than a job doing new development, why the environment and software you work in is so important... Even after more than 8 years, I think a lot of what she says is still valid and worth paying attention to. However, the book was published in 1988, and by computer standards that's pretty old. Ruhl speaks as a mainframe business programmer. The computer milleau has changed a lot since then. She says nothing about the Internet, and very little about PC"s and networking or about scientific/engineering computer work. I'd really like to see an updated rewrite of this book. Nonetheless, I think it's must reading for anyone considering a programming career, at least until something better comes along.