Bob and Alice will soon be a book

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Bob and Alice - Anti-Design Patterns in Life, Love and Tech will soon be a book.  Join other smart people who absolutely love Bob and Alice today.

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How my book on anti-patterns got started

The idea for a book on anti-design patterns was born in conversations with my friend Yaron Koler who was a talented real-time software engineer. For 20 years, Yaron and I learned Talmud together once a week.

We would meet at his house and open up the big Talmud tractates on their dining room table and start learning the Talmud.

Or not.

But first, we got sidetracked into talking about crazy stuff we saw at work.

Over time, I told Yaron that we should write a book on anti-design patterns, an anti-version of the the classic book on design patterns in software engineering by the Gang of Four.

"Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software."
Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides

In 2022, Yaron succumbed to liver cancer.

I decided that I must write the book.

My first shot at a book, was an attempt to catalog software engineering anti-design patterns in a Google doc. I worked on that with Jason Elbaum (who was working at Google at the time) and two of Yaron’s colleagues from Airspan  Networks; Zahi Zaltzman and Aviel Eliza.

The Google doc died after  2 weeks.

The next attempt started in January 2024, with me writing a weekly newsletter for fun.

Everyone says that the best way to learn how to write is to read good work and to write every day.

I started reading good work by people like Isaac Babel, Elmore Leonard, William Fulbright, Kai-Fu Lee, Stephen King, David Ogilvy, and Strunk & White.

I committed to myself to writing daily posts on X and LinkedIn and a chapter a week on substack.

I had the architecture for the book in my head and was too lazy to write outlines. 

After a while, the characters took over and guided me.

This newsletter grew organically and readers gave me feedback.

I write only about things I know from my personal experience.  That is why this book contains nothing about managing big organizations, how to become a unicorn or VC.

I’d like to thank my readers on substack, my colleague Tigran Arzumanov for sharing anti-patterns in sales and my daughter Naama for her assistance in editing.

I’m grateful to Kelli Ahlgrim for understanding women.

Kelli’s insights helped Bob and Alice reach a well-deserved happy-end after so many twists and turns.

You guys are awesome.

There are three parallel stories: a tech startup story (Giganet), a love story (Bob and Alice), and a series of 23 anti-design patterns in life, love and tech.

This is a business book, but it can be read as a novel for fun also if you want. 

Join me on my journey with Bob, Alice, Barry, Iris, Janna, Yasmin, Justin, Pesya, Madison and Mark as they explore anti-design patterns in life, love and tech.

Danny Lieberman
Modiin, Israel