Recommended reading: Intro Software Engineering

Mmmm_Lemony

Hi,

I will be doing Introduction to Software Engineering and OO Software Engineering next semester. The recommended reading will most likely be;

Pressman, R. (2005) Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach, 6th ed., McGraw Hill

Anyone have any comments on this, or a good alternative, entry level Introduction to Software engineering book. Preferably not specific to a particular language or technology.

Thanks.

Webmonkey

We used this book in college. It's actually really good but it's just got so much material.

The damn thing weighs a ton

It covers a lot of sections of software. It's a good reference book to look up but it's no bed time reading that's for sure.

fergalr

Roughly in order of recommendation:

McConnell - Rapid Development & Code Complete
Pragmatic Programmer

Mythical Man Month (not because its good, so much as because its a classic)
Peopleware (more on software aspects of team organisation, but great)

Joel On Software's various rants. (read with a critical eye, but lots of good stuff in there)



and then maybbeee:
art of unix programming (for a very philosophy heavy discussion on unix style software eng - thought provoking)
the practice of programming
programming pearls (maybe, not sure)


maybe:
Coders at work - pretty light, not really a textbook, but some nuggets of wisdom in there.


And finally, read a few wikipedia pages on Design Patterns, and a few arguments online about whether they are a good idea or not.
But don't read the gang of four book, its one of the most overrated books in my opinion.

In fact, don't worry too much about reading about object oriented software engineering in general. Its way overblown. Just design lots of OO systems, and learn how other people designed theirs.


Actually, I'd also recommend reading some of the more technical 'postmortems' from Game Developer http://www.gdmag.com/postmort.htm

If you can find some of the more technical ones of those, they can be quite insightful reading.





I've read all of the above; this is a genuine list of recommendations, not cogged off the interweb; but most of those will show up in most people's lists.

Webmonkey

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the OP wanted books on software engineering, that covers topics such as project planning, management, requirements gathering etc?

Good books there though. I need to get around to reading them myself at some stage.

Edit: Apologies, I see that OOP Engineering is listed too

fergalr

Webmonkey wrote: »

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the OP wanted books on software engineering, that covers topics such as project planning, management, requirements gathering etc?

I reckon most of those books do exactly that.


As an example, check out the contents of Rapid Development:
http://www.stevemcconnell.com/rdcntnt.htm



But, I think, more importantly than that, I found that those books have a lot of distilled experience.


I think you really only need to read one or two books on sort of cut and dried theory/methodology.

Rapid Development does a good job with that; after that, and a few projects, I think there's a more value in reading about the experiences and lessons learned by previous engineers.

I guess what I mean, is that once you've read one or two prescriptive surveys of best practice, you probably know roughly what the main ideas are.

After that, you don't need more prescriptions of what to do. Instead, you benefit more from a bit of experience of your own, and from reading the war stories of others - to see what actually worked, or failed, for them in practice - to sort of build a better BS detector, and to be able to adapt the theory to practice.

But I'm not pretending to be a guru on this, or anything - I've only a bit of experience, but its something I'm interested in.

Evil Phil

I've been reading the rapid development book as part of my MSc, it's a good book.

fergalr

Evil Phil wrote: »

I've been reading the rapid development book as part of my MSc, it's a good book.

Good to see it on a reading list - although its a pretty popular book, I think life as a developer would be easier if more people had read it.
What MSc is that, if you don't mind me asking?

henryporter

Pressman is a good all round Software Engineering book, however for a better one (IMO) try Ian Sommerville's Software Engineering 9th Edition http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/product/Software-Engineering-9E/9780137035151.page. It is right up to date in terms of rapid/agile and is far better written. Should be in most college libraries

Evil Phil

fergalr wrote: »

Good to see it on a reading list - although its a pretty popular book, I think life as a developer would be easier if more people had read it.
What MSc is that, if you don't mind me asking?

MSc in Internet Systems with the University of Liverpool. It's pretty good, in that it can be challenging which is what I'd expect for a MSc. I was doing one with the Open University but it was too easy to get good marks which made me doubt the quality of the qualification.