Re: Timeless Classics of Software Engineering

leslie wrote:
  > There's a later edition, 1995:
>
> 20th Anniversary Edition With Four New Chapters
>
> ISBN 0-201-83595-9
>
>
> --Jerry Leslie
> Note: leslie_at_jrlvax.houston.rr.com is invalid for email

I just finished reading Mythical Man Month 1995 cover to cover. It's a great book. The new sections don't add much.

The textbook at my Univ of Michigan software engineering class was, "Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach", by Roger S. Pressman. I don't know if they still use it, but this book covers the main software engineering paradigms quite well. It's no substitute for an experienced teacher and a class project though.

Finally, there's a classic book in urban design called "A Pattern Language : Towns, Buildings, Construction" by Christopher W. Alexander. I have not read all of this book, but I would recommend it for those who have the interest. There are some principles of urban design that are close analogs of principles of software engineering, even though urban design will always be simpler than software engineering. This is because the urban fabric is always regimented by the three dimensions of physical space, whereas software can have arbitrary dimensions and inter-relationships.

Maybe these are timeless classics too:
http://mindprod.com/unmain.html
http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/resourcepages/indian-hill.html Received on Wed Jul 28 2004 - 20:11:03 CEST