Someone said "you learn more from your mistakes than successes". I believe that, so I couldn't resist this book. I've read (well, own) the patterns book which gives me a collection of coding frameworks or approaches that have worked before. So I had to look at Anti-Patterns for the list of things which don't work.
Rather than just coding ideas which don't work (like spaghetti code, the blob, cut and paste programming) the book also covers architecture anti-patterns and project management anti-patterns. I found these two sections the most interesting.
On the architecture side, there are anti-patterns like Stovepipe Systems or Design by Committee (also known as: Gold Plating, Standards Disease, Make Everybody Happy, Political Party). A description of the anti-pattern (or is it AntiPattern?) is given ("A complex software design...has so many features and variations that it is infeasible for any group of developers to realize the specification in a reasonable time...") followed by a list of symptoms ("the design documentation is overly complex, unreadable, incoherent or is excessively defective; the committee meetings resemble bull sessions during which substantive issues are rarely discussed...") and typical causes ("No designated project architect; ...features are added to the specification based on proprietary interests; concerns are not separated...").
Rather than stop there, the nice part of anti-patterns is that you get a refactored solution and an example. In the case of Design by Committee the solution is to change the style of meetings and manage the meetings.
On the project management side we have topics such as Irrational Management:
Irrational Management covers a range of commonly occurring software project problems that can be traced back to the personalities of the person(s) running the project.... General form: the manager ... cannot make decisions. This may be a personality defect or the result of an obsession with details... Symptoms and Consequences: The primary symptom of the Irrational Management AntiPatterns is project thrashing...The refactored solution starts with "admit you have a problem and get help". So this eight-page example is probably one to photocopy and slip under someone's door.
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