35.2. Topics Beyond Construction

Beyond the core books described in the previous section, here are some books that range further afield from the topic of software construction.

Overview Material

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The following books provide software-development overviews from a variety of vantage points:

Robert L. Glass's Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering (2003) provides a readable introduction to the conventional wisdom of software development dos and don'ts. The book is well researched and provides numerous pointers to additional resources.

My own Professional Sofware Development (2004) surveys the field of software development as it is practiced now and as it could be if it were routinely practiced at its best.

The Swebok: Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (Abran 2001) provides a detailed decomposition of the software-engineering body of knowledge. This book has dived into detail in the software-construction area. The Guide to the Swebok shows just how much more knowledge exists in the field.

Gerald Weinberg's The Psychology of Computer Programming (Weinberg 1998) is packed with fascinating anecdotes about programming. It's far-ranging because it was written at a time when anything related to software was considered to be about programming. The advice in the original review of the book in the ACM Computing Reviews is as good today as it was when the review was written:

Every manager of programmers should have his own copy. He should read it, take it to heart, act on the precepts, and leave the copy on his desk to be stolen by his programmers. He should continue replacing the stolen copies until equilibrium is established (Weiss 1972).

If you can't find The Psychology of Computer Programming, look for The Mythical ManMonth (Brooks 1995) or PeopleWare (DeMarco and Lister 1999). They both drive home the theme that programming is first and foremost something done by people and only secondarily something that happens to involve computers.

A final excellent overview of issues in software development is Software Creativity (Glass 1995). This book should have been a breakthrough book on software creativity the way that Peopleware was on software teams. Glass discusses creativity versus discipline, theory versus practice, heuristics versus methodology, process versus product, and many of the other dichotomies that define the software field. After years of discussing this book with programmers who work for me, I have concluded that the difficulty with the book is that it is a collection of essays edited by Glass but not entirely written by him. For some readers, this gives the book an unfinished feel. Nonetheless, I still require every developer in my company to read it. The book is out of print and hard to find but worth the effort if you are able to find it.

Software-Engineering Overviews

Every practicing computer programmer or software engineer should have a high-level reference on software engineering. Such books survey the methodological landscape rather than painting specific features in detail. They provide an overview of effective software-engineering practices and capsule descriptions of specific software-engineering techniques. The capsule descriptions aren't detailed enough to train you in the techniques, but a single book would have to be several thousand pages long to do that. They provide enough information so that you can learn how the techniques fit together and can choose techniques for further investigation.

Roger S. Pressman's Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach, 6th ed. (Pressman 2004), is a balanced treatment of requirements, design, quality validation, and management. Its 900 pages pay little attention to programming practices, but that's a minor limitation, especially if you already have a book on construction such as the one you're reading.

The sixth edition of Ian Sommerville's Software Engineering (Sommerville 2000) is comparable to Pressman's book, and it also provides a good high-level overview of the software-development process.

Other Annotated Bibliographies

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Good computing bibliographies are rare. Here are a few that justify the effort it takes to obtain them:

ACM Computing Reviews is a special-interest publication of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) that's dedicated to reviewing books about all aspects of computers and computer programming. The reviews are organized according to an extensive classification scheme, making it easy to find books in your area of interest. For information on this publication and on membership in the ACM, write: ACM, PO Box 12114, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10257.

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Construx Software's Professional Development Ladder (http://www.construx.com/ladder/). This website provides recommended reading programs for software developers, testers, and managers.