Software Development Books

This book contains twelve small chapters on the adequate design of technical devices, the design of good and foremost well usable "user interfaces". Each of these chapters is a fast read (maybe half an hour), but contains enough substance to fill an entire book of good quality.

It is always good to remind oneself in regular intervals, of what excellent quality means. This book helps you.

I read it from the perspective of a software developer. After reading this I now think, that I really do finally understand the importance of use cases (see Ivar Jacobson). Before I was reading a book by Kent Beck on Test Driven Development. Also here the Jenson Book sheds extra illumination. A test is a use of a program.

You might find the book expensive for so few pages. These pages are more than worth it.

I like this book especially, because it explains in detail all this UIBuilder and Spec stuff. If you want to understand how to build powerful user interfaces, this book is must. It really gives you insight into the mechanisms of the VisualWorks UI building. It was rather easy for me, to add own widget specs into the framework after reading it.

Very thorough book. Well paced, with good grounding section on the history and technological components. The sample applications are good, if somewhat limited. A followup site on the Web with more examples and a discussion group would be of GREAT use.

This book is an interesting collection of essays on the soft elements of software engineering. Most of the essays deal with organizational and process aspects from a cross-functional perspective, and there is an emphasis on requirements and business/IT alignment in the overall theme of this collection.

Each of the five parts and 21 essays are grouped by a book structure that aligns to cross-functional cooperation from a software engineering point of view:
Part I Deconstructing
Chapter 1 -Developing and Embedding Autooperational Form Chapter 2 -On Foundational Categories in Software Development Chapter 3 -Making Use of Social Thinking: The Challenge of Bridging Activity Systems Chapter 4 -Challenging Traditions of Inquiry in Software Practice
Part II Informing
Chapter 5 -On Retrieving Skilled Practices: The Contribution of Ethnography to Software Development Chapter 6 -Representing and Modeling Collaborative Practices for Systems Development Chapter 7 -The Locales Framework: Making Social Thinking Accessible for Software Practitioners Chapter 8 -What Doesn't Fit: The "Residual Category" as Analytic Resource
Part III Grounding
Chapter 9 -On the Intertwining of Social and Technical Factors in Software Development Projects Chapter 10 -Software Practice is Social Practice Chapter 11 -"Yes-What Does That Mean?" Understanding Distributed Requirements Handling Chapter 12 -Doing Empirical Research on Software Development: Finding a Path between Understanding, Intervention, and Method Development
Part IV Organizing
Chapter 13 -Changing Work Practices in Design Chapter 14 -Information Systems Research and Information Systems Practice in a Network of Activities Chapter 15 -Reaching out for Commitments: Systems Development as Networking Chapter 16 -Participatory Organizational and Technological Innovation in Fragmented Work Environments Chapter 17 -Large-Scale Requirements Analysis as Heterogeneous Engineering
Part V Reorienting
Chapter 18 -Useware Design and Evolution: Bridging Social Thinking and Software Construction Chapter 19 -Discontinuities Chapter 20 -Localizing Self on the Internet: Designing for "Genius Loci" in a Global Context Chapter 21 -Intent, Form, and Materiality in the Design of Interaction Technology

Anyone who is concerned about business/IT alignment and software process improvement, especially readers who are working in a CMM Level 3 or above environment or in an IT or consulting organization that is a profit center will benefit from the many (if not all) of the ideas in this book. Even if some of the information is not actionable in your organization, it will cause you to view software engineering from multiple perspectives.

The author, James Shanahan is internationally renowned across a number of computing fields including AI, information retrieval, information access, linguistics, text/data mining and machine learning. Indeed his expertise is reflected in his already substantial and growing IP portfolio. The book quickly made it's mark leading to a substantial international speaking itinerary and it has directly influenced many new approaches, research and developments in soft computing and knowledge discovery.

The book forms a comprehensive discussion and overview of the traditional soft computing approaches to knowledge discovery and, importantly, advances the science to Cartesian granule features and their corresponding learning algorithms thus introducing an intuitive approach to knowledge discovery.

The book and it's contents are well thought out both in how it presents complexities and in how it argues and presents this new approach vis a vi the traditional and other approaches. The approach is supported with examples applied to diverse scenarios including object recognition in outdoor scenes and in medical diagnosis and control.

It's not just a book but an essential reference source, teaching tool and resource for all with an interest in the topic. It provides a host of datasets and source codes for several algorithms described in the book.

Don't stop with this book. James Shanahan continues to surprise and amaze in the computing field and can be found presenting at numerous events each year from Asia to the US to Europe. He has an avid following and is certainly `one to watch'.

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A Software Architecture Primer beautifully describes a small set of light-weight practices that can streamline and systematize your software design process without bogging you down in a beureaucratic process.

Usually when I think of software engineering process, I think of a set of burdensome tasks that drag me down and make it more difficult to explore or change my design. Each design change can result in hours or days updating countless documents, recommunicating those changes in reviews, and so on. At the same time, it is usefult to have a structure for fleshing out a software design and communicating it to your team.

In contrast to most other authors I've read in this space, Reekie and McAdam realize that there is a tension between process (structure) and getting real work done. So rather than going on and on about the minutiae of different software design formalisms and whatnot, they clearly and succinctly describe a set of techniques and exercises that will help you systematically design better software and communicate your design to others without slowing you down. This is the first software architecture book that I will actually put to practice in my next software project, rather than picking and choosing from the huge body of literature in this space.

If I could use only one of the stack of SCM books I own to guide me through an implementation and serve as reference this book would be it. The reasons for this bold statement are:

- it's comprehensive in coverage, starting with an in-depth introduction that clearly explains software configuration management as a discipline and process area, its benefits, and an overview of implementation issues, to details on every aspect of performing and managing software configuration.

- it addresses SCM from both software engineering and project management perspectives.

- it's based on established standards (MIL-STD-973 and EIA-649).

To readers who are working in agile environments that employ rapid development and implementation approaches the MIL-STD-973 and EIA-649 standards upon which this book is based may raise a red flag. To assuage concerns about introducing what many may perceive to be heavy, bureaucratic standards to processes designed for fast paced implementation, SCM is one area that requires checkpoints and a methodical process to ensure quality. As you read this book you'll find that neither MIL-STD-973 or EIA-649 are inherently cumbersome, especially if tailored to your specific project or development environment.

Highlights of this book, aside from the detailed treatment of every facet of SCM, are the copious use of tables and graphics to summarize or clarify key concepts and how processes work, and the wealth of artifacts contained in the appendices. The appendices alone are worth the price of this book because they provide templates, guidelines and checklists, and forms that you can immediately use. Note, though, that many of these artifacts are also provided in other books from the publisher, and some such as the DoD Engineering Change Proposal may not be applicable to your objectives (although they will be useful if tailored).

As you read this book you'll discover that general configuration management principles are also introduced, expanding the usefulness to integrators as well as software engineers. What I especially like is how the book never loses sight of the relationship between SCM and quality, the way metrics are identified and presented, and the interrelationship between configuration management and maintenance.

I personally believe that this book is the best there is for implementing and employing a strong SCM process, which is critical to any software or integration project.

This book really looks at software creativity from a number of dichotomies - Ancient Greek (bring your own hammer) v. Rome (Let's build this together), Discipline v. Flexible, Formal v. Heuristics, extrinsic v. intrinsic motivations, science v. art and a number of others. These topics are all addressed in a series of very easy to read essays that takes the reader through the journey of determining what is best.
I found this a very good read and one that I will ponder for sometime.

This is a highly recommendable book. A must for everyone interested in how human-comupter interaction is studied or conceived or debated.

Read about those topics, that are hot or ever-greens for the usability-interested.

Maybe you don't know all of those names in the title, but you will surely see why THEY've been chosen for the interviews.

The topics are presented the way they were raised with the interviewed persons - as dialogues, interviews.

This is a great way of approaching and exploring the thoughts and concepts that go across the entire field of software and internet development, and not through just one or two writers.

It's a lot of food for thought.