Software Development Books

Chapter 11 of this book is concerned with porting existing MMX to WirelessMMX. If you are the type that is going to play with MMX code, chances are you have been playing with MMX code, and this chapter is ~the~ chapter that you are looking for.

I haven't read far through the book yet, nor tried the examples, but the reading is very presentable and the topics are well aligned with existing needs for performance optimized software on PDA/Phone devices.

IntelPRESS has good connections with the hardware developers at Intel, and the book has been reviewed by some of the key Intel Developers and Systems Integrators. In a world where correctly surfing the technology wave is the difference between staying afloat and drowning -- I look to IntelPress to keep my head above water.

This book is both a reference and a good instructional overview on how to program Motif. Essentially, Motif is a collection of widgets that one can program. The book references these widgets, shows screen shots, shows where in the tree the widget is derived from, details little code snippets, and has comprehensive explanations on how to use it, return values, etc.

Now, these modern times, one would probaly want to program with Qt (KDE) or GTK, but there's tons of historical code out there that's still being used these days, that will undoubtedly require some Motif knowledge, and I would say this book is a great resource for that.

This is a completely updated book that departs from the earlier "Software Engineering Project Management" by Thayer (1997) in that it's more anchored in software engineering standards than in project management. To be sure, this book is about project management, but takes a more holistic view.

The best practices, predicated upon the view that the common thread is software engineering standards and practices, are presented in three sections:

(1)Software Systems Engineering - a critical success factor for any software project.
(2) Process Management and Control - what must be done in order to effectively scope, support and manage the development process itself.
(3) Project Planning and Management - standard fare, including estimation, risk management, and metrics.

Each of these sections contain papers that discuss aspects of the topic area, which include: Software Systems Engineering, Concept of Operations, Software Requirements Specification, Software User Documentation, Software Verification and Validation, Software Life Cycle Process Management, Software Process Improvement, Software Reviews, Software Configuration Management, Software Quality Assurance, Maintenance, Software Engineering Project Management, Software Cost and Schedule, Software Risk Management and Software Metrics.

Personally I completely agree with the book's approach (standards and processes are critical to successful development projects). However, even if taken as individual papers, each chapter presents excellent advice and insights that will benefit not only project managers, but all members of a development team. If you do agree with me that the overall approach is valid you will also find " SWEBOK: Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge" by Alain Abran(ISBN 0769510000) will complement this book by providing more foundation material about key areas of the software engineering process.

This book provides, in one volume, one of the best introductions to prolog programming and one of the best introductions to natural language processing. It is virtually unique in that it shows how to interface a natural language interface to a theorem prover.

This book was far ahead of its time when it was published, and it is still far ahead of most of the books written today on NLP.

This book tackles a deep and complicated topic (Computer Modeling and, by extension, Computer Simulation) by gently carrying the reader through the text with the clever use of analogy and story telling. Rarely is the reader directly assaulted with knowledge, but instead, the reader is told a parable and then the parable is explained within the context of the subject matter.

This book has the same tone as The Planets by Dava Sobel. It is clever and, at times, romantic in its application of astronomy, gemology and other topics that are used to entertain the reader as it educates.

I found the meta-modeling (describing a model, describing a system) to be an interesting background throughout the book.

The author obviously knows his subject matter - both the subject of the book (modeling) and the variety of disciplines used to describe the promise and limits of modeling.

While this book lacks hard specifics that would make it a reference manual, it instead focuses on training the reader in the way to address and think about modeling. Like Thinking in Java (4th Edition), this book shows the reader the proper way to approach the problem and gives guidance on a solution without becoming yet another reference manual.

For individuals new to modeling, or for seasoned professionals looking to see their field from a fresh perspective, this book is a unique and elegant addition to your library.

I've been meaning to write this review for a while, because this book is sorely under-recognized and underappreciated.

Prototype-based programming languages were a hot research topic in the 1990s. The idea that one could create software objects directly at runtime, without classes, by piecing together data and behavior was very interesting to many, but somehow lost in the mad rush towards C++ and Java. JavaScript is one of the few prototype-based languages that survives in widespread use, yet it is really just a poor step-cousin to direct manipulation-based prototype languages like Self.

This book is a collection of papers (some of which are hard to find via other channels) that provide a good overview of the field. Philosophy, implementation techniques, and esoterica, it is all here. I suspect that we may find one day, as Integrated Development Environments become more powerful, that the idea of prototype-based development should be revisited. If you are a programming language researcher, designer or enthusiast, this book is a very good place to begin learning about prototype-based development.

I have not read all of James Martin's book, but I have researched the topic, and the book talks about the Rapid Application Development software development methodology of which James Martin was the primary author. The methodology was developed by Dr. Martin in the late 1980's as a response to the non-agile methodologies of the 1970's such as the waterfall methodology. The primary problem of the previous methodologies was that larger applications took so long to build that requirements would change before the system was complete, resulting in unusable systems. Rapid Application Development (RAD) attempts to solve the problem through prototyping, iterative development, time boxing, small teams, an active management approach, and the use of Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools. The RAD methodology is not as popular today as agile methodologies such as eXtreme Programming (XP), but it is still a valuable methodology in the right circumstances. I have put together an article about Rapid Application Development if you are interested in more information on the topic at (...)

Dr Low's latest book further confirms he's one of the top SQL Server experts in the world. If you need to learn SQL Server CLR, I heartily recommend this book.

As well as featuring an extremely large and diverse collection of papers on the latest in Agent based technologies, this book has a wonderful introduction by the Editors. If you are considering, or indulging in, researching agent software then you need this book.

Computers are not always about computers, they are often about people. This book gets the human element out in the open. The interesting people are not the Bill Gates and Andy Groves of this world (although they are in there) it's the Herman Hasuers and Mike Markkulas - people whose vision is more impressive than their products. It's a great book to dip into, because all the chapters were orginally magazine articles you can pick it up for five minutes, read and then skip to something else. Ideal if you travel on public transport. But then I am biased - the book was my idea