Bookshelf Acronis: about books and philosophy in programming

Lifehacker.ru and Publishing "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber"Continue to explore the bookshelves IT-companies. To this end, we have visited in the Acronis office.

Acronis - Russian company, which has become a global specialist in the field of data backup. Acronis products for backup and recovery of data in the lead in the 90 countries, the company has 18 offices around the world. People who are working on the preservation of information, probably once in a special way to relate information from books. Let's look at their bookshelves?

In the Moscow office of the company, two bookcases. One - from the professional literature, the other - from the art. Here's what readers employees at work:

There are many books on Microsoft technologies, databases, interface design... From language leads Perl, there are benefits of Visual Basic.

You can find several volumes about project management, testing, requirements for software development.

If an employee wants to read something, it fills an application and relates to the reception. There friendly girl writes to a book and give the keys to the promised bookcase.

Immediately obvious that a lot of readers - out as a read out book about Exchange Server, all your bookmarks and notes.

However, on this shelf - entirely technical literature. We found a couple of books about success stories, and both about Google. "A breakthrough in the spirit of the time" on the shelf, and The Google Story"Someone took a reading. It seems that for the full set here is not enough "Google. Past present Future».

Suddenly we discovered the works that are respected by our colleagues from the publishing house "», «Form of the Book. Selected articles about the book design and typography"Jan Tschichold. There are inspirational bestseller about the business of a new era - a well-known Rework.

But surely no one in the Acronis does not read books about self-management, personal growth, development of thinking? We asked the staff themselves.

It turned out even how to read. Emil Manukyan, chief architect of the "most memorable and performing the impression of management books, of course, was"Peopleware" (Human factor. Projects Team) Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister. Book as though it were copied from the design issues that caused me to turn to literature. From all of the above anti-patterns to our then situation did not come only "Furniture police '."

In general, Emile is a very interesting approach to reading. "I have two" flow "of literature, which I read every day," professional "and" on any subject. " Free theme was conceived as a philosophical, but gradually this "flow" began to appear books on psychology, spirituality, popular science. The "Professional Feed" infiltrated books on management, business, technology, science (artificial intelligence in addition to programming languages ​​and design, collective consciousness), usability, requirements specification, cognitive psychology, linguistics and architecture, will serve as a source for software discoveries. "

Among the books "philosophical stream" Emile called «La Divina Comeida» Dante Castaneda, Borges, "La rebelión de las masas »Gabriel Ortega y Gasset, Dead cert Dick Francis," Critique of Pure Reason " Kant. "The width of the horizon has never stopped anyone," - he commented.

In order to estimate the width of the horizon architects Acronis, you can look at the case with fiction:

Anatoly Bobrov, had a hand in the appearance in the company of an art library, said: "Wardrobe live their lives. Some books appear, others disappear, and it's fun. I'm trying to be responsible and play the role of the librarian, but if there is no lock - why? Here there is a "sharing without looking" - you can bring something, in your opinion, it is very simple, and discover what doted meet.

Some books leave forever: my "loss" "Time Drive"Archangel, from acquisitions -"illumination"Gladwell."

So that's where, it turns out, nest business books! We found on the shelf "financier"Dreiser. This book is sometimes called the progenitor of the genre business novelIn which many popular authors presented their ideas.

There on that shelf and Camus and Hemingway, and "Noon" Strugatsky. Leaves, cases are clearly divided into technical and humanitarian?

We objected Emil. He explains that the programming is in its best manifestations - the area is not a technical but a very humanitarian.

"The programmer has to deal with a man! Even if disown user, programmer man himself and often the solution is to dig out the steps that he did fleetingly in his brain, came to problem solving. And what is this if not self-analysis and cognitive psychology? "

Emil told us that the study of philosophy helps to better understand the essence of the program, "Kant argued that the mind tends to absoluteness. But exactly this is the perfect clear program - unconditional (ie all conditions pulled to the level of the application configuration, creating a domain abstraction). Useful to me and Jung with his synchronously (I was just interested in the timing of the two program agents), existentialism, which led to the metaphor environment for virtualization software module and even "War Craft"Sun Tzu, approving the number five as the maximum available for the control of the human brain. Well, the mass of living metaphors that every day help in the design to select the desired names for the entity - it may be said, my bread on my position of the architect. "

However, the company has another library, knowledge of which derive Acronis technical support staff. Alexander Krutikhin, manager of training and the quality of support: "This library is used for the preparation of Certification Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist and Linux Professional Institute Certification. Every year the most productive employees of the department have the opportunity to be certified by the company's expense. Acronis provides the necessary literature for self-study and pay for the exam in one of the official partners of Microsoft. "

That's very different books help employees Acronis. When the artistic and philosophical literature allows you to open new facets of the profession - it speaks not only about the love of books, but also the love for the profession. It remains to be happy that one of Russia's most successful IT-companies like and read and work.
Photos of Christina Yatkovsky