Tracy Kidder got a preview of this world in the late 1970s when he observed the engineers of Data General design and build a new 32-bit minicomputer in just one year. His thoughtful, prescient book, The Soul of a New Machine, tells stories of 35-year-old "veteran" engineers hiring recent college graduates and encouraging them to work harder and faster on complex and difficult projects, exploiting the youngsters' ignorance of normal scheduling processes while engendering a new kind of work ethic.These days, we are used to the "total commitment" philosophy of managing technical creation, but Kidder was surprised and even a little alarmed at the obsessions and compulsions he found. From in-house political struggles to workers being permitted to tease management to marathon 24-hour work sessions, The Soul of a New Machine explores concepts that already seem familiar, even old-hat, less than 20 years later. Kidder plainly admires his subjects; while he admits to hopeless confusion about their work, he finds their dedication heroic. The reader wonders, though, what will become of it all, now and in the future. —Rob Lightner

    In this revision, the author takes a structured approach to explaining how networks function.

    Software Engineering Economics is an invaluable guide to determining software costs, applying the fundamental concepts of microeconomics to software engineering, and utilizing economic analysis in software engineering decision making.

    The book provides an introduction to the language, paying particular attention to programming style. In addition, it covers the more machine-independent parts of the BCPL library and outlines various debugging aids that most implementations provide. The syntax analysis phase of the compiler is described in detail, giving a realistic example of a typical application of the language. This and other substantial examples given in the book will be of interest both to serious users of BCPL and to computer writers. There is a chapter concerned with the portability code generator design. The reference for BCPL appears as the final chapter.