Getting Real details the business, design, programming, and marketing principles of 37signals. The book is packed with keep-it-simple insights, contrarian points of view, and unconventional approaches to software design. This is not a technical book or a design tutorial, it's a book of ideas. Anyone working on a web app - including entrepreneurs, designers, programmers, executives, or marketers - will find value and inspiration in this book. 37signals used the Getting Real process to launch five successful web-based applications (Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack, Writeboard, Ta-da List), and Ruby on Rails, an open-source web application framework, in just two years with no outside funding, no debt, and only 7 people (distributed across 7 time zones). Over 500,000 people around the world use these applications to get things done. Now you can find out how they did it and how you can do it too. It's not as hard as you think if you Get Real.

《测试驱动开发》(中文版)设想把编程看成是转动曲柄从井里提一桶水上来的过程。如果水桶比较小，那么仅需一个能自由转动的曲柄就可以了。如果水桶比较大而且装满水，那么还没等水桶全部被提上来你就会很累了。你需要一个防倒转的装置，以保证每转一次可以休息一会儿。水桶越重，防倒转的棘齿相距越近。测试驱动开发中的测试程序就是防倒转装置上的棘齿。一旦我们的某个测试程序能工作了，你就知道，它从现在开始并且以后永远都可以工作了。相比于测试程序没有通过，你距离让所有的测试程序都工作又近了一步。现在我们的工作是让下一个测试程序工作，然后再下一个，就这样一直进行。分析表明，要编程解决的问题越难，每次测试所覆盖的范围就应该越小。