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The Best of Verity Stob: Highlights of Verity Stob's Famous Columns from .Exe, Dr. Dobb's Journal, and the Register
 
 
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The Best of Verity Stob: Highlights of Verity Stob's Famous Columns from .Exe, Dr. Dobb's Journal, and the Register [Paperback]

Verity Stob
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Product details

  • Paperback: 316 pages
  • Publisher: APRESS (1 Feb 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1590594428
  • ISBN-13: 978-1590594421
  • Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 15.5 x 2.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 352,773 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • See Complete Table of Contents

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Verity Stob
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Product Description

Product Description

Verity Stob is the comedienne of the programming world. She has been writing satirical chronicles of techie life since 1988. Her column first appeared in the legendary .EXE Magazine, then Dr. Dobbs' Journal, and it now graces The Register.

For the first time, the very best of Stob's columns have been collected into one essential book. Discover why Mrs. Bill Gates calls in a programmer to fix her plumbing; find out about the Google computer that suffers from Tourette's syndrome; discover the shameful secret of the CEO who types his correspondence in CAPITAL LETTERS, and much, much more!

Table of Contents

  1. How Friendly Is Your Software?
  2. The Programmers’ Guide to Programmers
  3. Larn Yasel Programmin!
  4. POET’S Day
  5. The Maltese Modem
  6. Late One Night
  7. The Kraken Sleeps
  8. Twenty Things (Almost) You Didn’t Know
  9. Few Lend (but Fools)
  10. The Best Improve with Age
  11. STOB versus the Software Engineers
  12. Auntie Verity’s Hardware Help
  13. Underground Liff
  14. The Games We Play
  15. A Chance to Meet You
  16. Wot Any Bule Kno
  17. About
  18. Not Fairies’ Footfalls
  19. FLGMJLLGHQ
  20. In Glorious VerityVision
  21. I Want to Die
  22. Dear Bill
  23. Modem Tales
  24. Around and Around
  25. Four Yorkshiremen
  26. Email and Femail
  27. Morse Code
  28. I Prefer Tea
  29. Junior Makes Three
  30. Don’t Look Back
  31. Book of Anders
  32. The Black Eye of the Little Blue Techie
  33. Mr. Jobs Works Next Door
  34. Quality Street
  35. You May Start
  36. 8086 and All That
  37. The Browser
  38. Park Gates
  39. Et Tu Gnome?
  40. Let’s Parler Y2K!
  41. Yocam Hokum
  42. Bye Bye Byte
  43. Night Mail
  44. Cringing for Bobot or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About the Quality of My Work and Just Made Dreary TV Programmes Instead
  45. One Nostril Hair, 17mm, Grey
  46. The Dog’s Breakfast
  47. Book of Yoc-am (Cont'd.)
  48. Fair Play
  49. By Other Means
  50. Waltz$
  51. Thirteen Ways to Loathe VB
  52. Claire’s Story and Other Tragedies
  53. Down the Pole
  54. Out to Lunch
  55. Two by Two
  56. Big Iron Age Man
  57. Just William
  58. Downwards and Backwards with Dotdotdot
  59. Up with the Joneses
  60. Wherever He Goes
  61. The Devil’s Netiquette
  62. At the Tomb of the IUnknown Interface
  63. Double Plus Good?
  64. I Know This, It’s Unix
  65. Your Call Is Important to Us
  66. Way After 1984
  67. Patter Song
  68. Roger D. Hubris Ate My Hamster
  69. State of Decay
  70. In Memoriam—Edsger Dijkstra, 1930–2002
  71. Open Saucery
  72. Idle Thoughts of an Idle Process
  73. Fragments from a New Finnish Epic
  74. Stoblog
  75. We Don’t Guarantee That Using The Latest .NET XML Windows API Feature Can Metaphorically Speaking Put Bounce In Your Boobs And/Or Hairs On Your Chest (Delete As Applicable) But By Golly We Find It Extremely Hard To Imagine Circumstances Under Which This Will Not Follow As Naturally As Night Follows Day
  76. Soundtrack
  77. Damnation Without Relief
  78. Cold Comfort Server Farm ForgeAhead
  79. One After 409
  80. Jam Today
  81. Borland Revelations
  82. Patenting by Numbers
  83. Confessions of a Spammer
  84. Solder Cellar—Kindly Accept Substitutes
  85. Lara’s Last Stand?
  86. Too Obscure or Rude

About the Author

Verity Stob has been a programmer since 1984 and a columnist since 1988. Her column appeared in the "cult" (i.e. defunct) British programming journal, .EXE Magazine, until 2000, and has since adorned the granddaddy of programmers' rags, Dr. Dobb's Journal. Stob's work has also appeared on the popular IT news website, The Register. Miss Stob lives and works in London, UK. Her face remains hidden.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
When I announced, on cix, that my "Verity Stob (does not) have a big bottom" t-shirt had finally fallen to bits (that's 8 bits not your new fangled 32 or 64 bits mind) Ms Stob wrote to me saying I should console myself with her new book.

So I did, and I'm jolly glad I did too.

Such joy at reading some old favourites from her jottings in .EXE mag. The subtle wit distilled from the understanding of the experienced practitioner and her coding pencil. The art of refined and clever programming by a master of her craft, clever, syntactically correct with all the correct verbs. A far cry from today's regression of languages to point and grunt.

This book is a must, to be chuckled at over and over and sit amongst the hallowed tomes of K&R, "Obfuscated C", Knuth and tattered cuttings of "Sam and the Fat man" from Freelance Informer (another defunct mag from the heady days when the streets of London were paved with drunk contract programmers).

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Wonderful 4 Mar 2005
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I'm astounded there aren't a whole load of positive reviews for this fine book. Funny, nostalgic, and hopefully Verity's column will reappear regularly in some suitable organ.
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Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Verity's columns have always provoked a giggle, I don't know how accessible any of it is to non-techies, but I'd like to think she manages to be funny with or without the lines of sarcastic code!

This book contains a selection of the articles from exe and beyond (Stob was on the register last time I looked).

Unfortunately it is incomplete, there are some hilarious pieces she's done that have not made it in. The frustrating thing is, a lot of the stuff I like used to be on various online sites she had contributed to and they are gradually disappearing into 404 land.

I guess maybe what I like of Stob doesn't match the editor's tastes, the book is heavy on the poetic skits at the expense of the more fawlty towers type sketches that describe (in a round about way) the day to day pain of trying to be a programmer in corporate britain.

Long comedic discourse on what happened to various key figures and companies was probably funny in conjunction with the news at the time, but I don't think those bits age as well as descriptions of being asked stupid questions in job interviews.
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