Computing Related Titles

This is a list of software engineering and general computer oriented books. I've included them as a separate list since my profession has involved more than a little bit of this and I've read a lot of titles over the years. Like all things in an evolving industry, the techniques and fads change over time - so this is a pretty fluid list.

  • The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll

    • I couldn't quite decide what category this fell into, so I've gone for popular science. I read this book many years ago - one of the first about computer hacking - or more specifically the attempts to track down a hacker long before the days of broadband. Clifford Stoll was an astronomy post grad who ran out of research money so took on a job supporting the computer science department's systems. He detected a break in to the system. This book is the story of how he tracked the hacker down. This was first written up in Communications of the ACM as an article by the title "Stalking the Wily Hacker." Definitely recommended.

  • Strategies for Software Engineering by Martyn Ould
  • Software Testing in the Real World by Edward Kitt

    A good book on the subject of software testing. It's a bit dated now - but worth a read.

  • Peopleware by Tom DeMarco

    Not really about software as such, but relevant to any industry where people are working together. One of my favourite books on the topic of creating environments where people will work well together.

  • The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management by Tom DeMarco
  • Agile and Iterative Development by Craig Larman

    • A useful introduction to the various Agile techniques - gives a good overview and describes the reasoning behind the approaches.

  • Death March by Edward Yourdon

    A book on how not to do big projects!

  • The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer by Edward Yourdon
  • Firewalls and Internet Security by Cheswick, Bellovin and Rubin

    • An instructive book on how to build a firewall.

  • Build Your Own Expert System by Chris Naylor

    • This book is out of print - but is an excellent simple introduction to the principles of learning expert systems. We had some guys doing things in Lisp at the time with a carrier to noise test set - but I fancied writing a program to try and predict greyhound race winners. This book didn't quite let me do that - but it was certainly an easy read and quite instructive.

  • The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks

    • One of the classics of all time. Written by a guy who was intimately involved with the development of the IBM 360 operating system. It has been updated and special editions released in relatively recent years. Adding people to a late software project makes it later.

  • The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder

    • This is the story of how Data General created a skunk works in an attempt to get a new computer that was running late out the door. It's a compelling read - I won't spoil the story, but it's not a particularly happy ending! Many companies bogged down in internal bureaucracy have attempted to do something like this. This is in my mind an instructive lesson. Highly recommended.