“Its like that legal Crack” Those are the words a friend of mine uses to describe things that are amazing, things that are so awesome they should not be legal. There are very few experiences in life that you can say are so amazing, life changing and perspective altering. In my time I have experienced very few.

I am not the type to write book reviews, I have no claims to be as credible as Oprah’s book club suggestions but I believe I know a good book when I see one and that is what “Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application” is. before writing this review I thought about the most concise way to explain how good this book is or how important it is and basically all I can say is that it is that legal crack.

Getting Real is a book written by 37 Signals. This is a the company that created Basecamp and Campfire or probably more known for publishing the famous Ruby on Rails framework. The title of the book could not be more appropriate, it a book basically about cutting the bullshit in creating web applications and actually doing the damn thing. Moving from Computer engineering to Software engineering was a huge perspective change for me but reading this book just put those “Crack” principles in concrete. Getting real takes you through a product life cycle, from how to act from the conception of the idea to the deployment and maintenance of your product. It gets you in the mindset of discovering and implementing what really matters.

The greatest aspect of the book is that it’s scope is beyond the web applications. The principles in this book can be applied in all sorts of companies and even in your life, so even if your not a code monkey or a vetran geek this book is still worth your read. Getting Real is for anyone who has an enterprenueral or creative mind and for people who are interested in making their lives more efficient. The book comes in three forms, you can buy the actual book for $25, the downloadable pdf for $20 or read it online for free. I urge you to check it out, it may work wonders for you as it did for me.