Alexander on Web Development

I must say, this is one of the most inspiring books I've read in my life. Seriously. Except for one person, I haven't had anyone inspire me to become own entrepreneur since I decided I wanted to move from an IT helpdesk technician to a full time PHP programmer. That person was the one who trained me as an IT helpdesk technician in the Army, and he isn't anywhere near San Juan, Puerto Rico. [bummer] Enter Eric Sink's book from Apress. It is written for developers who want to be coding entrepreneurs and are a little shaky on the business side of things. It really feels that it was written for geeks by a geek. To become a good ISV entrepreneur, it is not good enough to be a great coding hacker, as I have witnessed with my own flesh and blood, you also need to be a good marketer, accountant, technical recruiter, strategist, salesman, etc. When starting with your own programming business you may not have the budget to rent a fully staffed, luxurious suite on the most expensive office building in Manhattan's 5th Avenue. Even if you have enough budget for a secretary, you will find yourself doing all sorts of jobs you have never done before. Erick Sink on the the Business of Software is a collection of edited articles from Eric's weblog at http://sofware.ericsink.com, where he writes about his successes and failures across eight years of managing a self-funded software company. BTW, he comes highly recommended from Joel Spolsky, Fog Creek's CEO and also one of my favorite authors =]