Alan Cooper (1999): The Inmates Are Running The Asylum, Indianapolis: Sams

Buy the book on Amazon (affiliate link)
It is uncanny how well Cooper describes the problem of e.g. “developer UI”, a symptom of letting talented programmers loose to solve a problem in software. Programmers create software for similarly tech-savvy people. Actual end users are too far removed from their realm to be imaginable.
This is not the oldest book on the psychology of programming I know (that’d the the 1971 book by Gerald Weinberg), but it captures their psyche very well.

Full reference I use in my notes:

[#cooper1999asylum]: Alan Cooper (1999): _The inmates are running the asylum_, 
  Indianapolis, IN: Sams.

Relevant Blog Posts

These are e.g. tagged with #cooper1999asylum.

Oct 23 2025

Zettelkasten for Programmers: Pick a Title. It’s Okay to Change Later

Look over my shoulder and find out why my note title is suspiciously generous, maybe even vague, in a context where it’s obvious that this surely won’t be a good title forever.