Book picks similar to
Discussion of the Method: Conducting the Engineer's Approach to Problem Solving by Billy Vaughn Koen
non-fiction
science
philosophy
engineering
The Problem with Software: Why Smart Engineers Write Bad Code
Adam Barr - 2018
As the size and complexity of commercial software have grown, the gap between academic computer science and industry has widened. It's an open secret that there is little engineering in software engineering, which continues to rely not on codified scientific knowledge but on intuition and experience.Barr, who worked as a programmer for more than twenty years, describes how the industry has evolved, from the era of mainframes and Fortran to today's embrace of the cloud. He explains bugs and why software has so many of them, and why today's interconnected computers offer fertile ground for viruses and worms. The difference between good and bad software can be a single line of code, and Barr includes code to illustrate the consequences of seemingly inconsequential choices by programmers. Looking to the future, Barr writes that the best prospect for improving software engineering is the move to the cloud. When software is a service and not a product, companies will have more incentive to make it good rather than "good enough to ship."
Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas
James L. Adams - 1969
Now, twenty-five years after its original publication, Conceptual Blockbusting has never been more relevant, powerful, or fresh. Integrating insights from the worlds of psychology, engineering, management, art, and philosophy, Adams identifies the key blocks (perceptual, emotional, cultural, environmental, intellectual, and expressive) that prevent us from realizing the full potential of our fertile minds. Employing unconventional exercises and other interactive elements, Adams shows individuals, teams, and organizations how to overcome these blocks, embrace alternative ways of thinking about complex problems, and celebrate the joy of creativity. With new examples and contemporary references, Conceptual Blockbusting is guaranteed to introduce a new generation of readers to a world of new possibilities.
Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things
Donald A. Norman - 2003
Emotional Design will appeal not only to designers and manufacturers but also to managers, psychologists, and general readers who love to think about their stuff.
Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process
Kenneth S. Rubin - 2012
Leading Scrum coach and trainer Kenny Rubin illuminates the values, principles, and practices of Scrum, and describes flexible, proven approaches that can help you implement it far more effectively. Whether you are new to Scrum or years into your use, this book will introduce, clarify, and deepen your Scrum knowledge at the team, product, and portfolio levels. Drawing from Rubin's experience helping hundreds of organizations succeed with Scrum, this book provides easy-to-digest descriptions enhanced by more than two hundred illustrations based on an entirely new visual icon language for describing Scrum's roles, artifacts, and activities.
Essential Scrum
will provide every team member, manager, and executive with a common understanding of Scrum, a shared vocabulary they can use in applying it, and practical knowledge for deriving maximum value from it.
Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies
Cesar A. Hidalgo - 2015
He believes that we should investigate what makes some countries more capable than others. Complex products—from films to robots, apps to automobiles—are a physical distillation of an economy’s knowledge, a measurable embodiment of its education, infrastructure, and capability. Economic wealth accrues when applications of this knowledge turn ideas into tangible products; the more complex its products, the more economic growth a country will experience.A radical new interpretation of global economics, Why Information Grows overturns traditional assumptions about the development of economies and the origins of wealth and takes a crucial step toward making economics less the dismal science and more the insightful one.
Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Web Application
37 Signals - 2006
At under 200 pages it's quick reading too. Makes a great airplane book.
Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale
Jez Humble - 2014
Adopting Lean will take time and commitment, but it’s vital for harnessing the cultural and technical forces that are accelerating the rate of innovation.* Discover how Lean focuses on people and teamwork at every level, in contrast to traditional management practices* Approach problem-solving experimentally, by exploring solutions, testing assumptions, and getting feedback from real users* Lead and manage large-scale programs in a way that empowers employees, increases the speed and quality of delivery, and lowers costs* Learn how to implement ideas from the DevOps and Lean Startup movements even in complex, regulated environments
Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think
Andy OramLincoln Stein - 2007
You will be able to look over the shoulder of major coding and design experts to see problems through their eyes.This is not simply another design patterns book, or another software engineering treatise on the right and wrong way to do things. The authors think aloud as they work through their project's architecture, the tradeoffs made in its construction, and when it was important to break rules. Beautiful Code is an opportunity for master coders to tell their story. All author royalties will be donated to Amnesty International.
Accelerate: Building and Scaling High-Performing Technology Organizations
Nicole Forsgren - 2018
Through four years of groundbreaking research, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim set out to find a way to measure software delivery performance—and what drives it—using rigorous statistical methods. This book presents both the findings and the science behind that research. Readers will discover how to measure the performance of their teams, and what capabilities they should invest in to drive higher performance.
Badass: Making Users Awesome
Kathy Sierra - 2015
The rules? No marketing budget, no PR stunts, and it must be sustainably successful. No short-term fads.This is not a game of chance. It is a game of skill and strategy.And it begins with a single question: given competing products of equal pricing, promotion, and perceived quality, why does one outsell the others?The answer doesn’t live in the sustainably successful products or services. The answer lives in those who use them.Our goal is to craft a strategy for creating successful users. And that strategy is full of surprising, counter-intuitive, and astonishingly simple techniques that don’t depend on a massive marketing or development budget. Techniques typically overlooked by even the most well-funded, well-staffed product teams.Every role is a key player in this game. Product development, engineering, marketing, user experience, support—everyone on the team. Even if that team is a start-up of one. Armed with a surprisingly overlooked science and a unique POV, we can can reduce the role of luck. We can build sustainably successful products and services that rely not on unethical persuasive marketing tricks but on helping our users have deeper, richer experiences. Not just in the moments while they’re using our product but, more importantly, in the moments when they aren’t.
Computer Lib/Dream Machines
Ted Nelson - 1974
His rallying cry "Down with Cybercrud" is against the centralization of computers such as that performed by IBM at the time, as well as against what he sees as the intentional untruths that "computer people" tell to non-computer people to keep them from understanding computers. In Dream Machines, Nelson covers the flexible media potential of the computer, which was shockingly new at the time.
Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development
Craig Larman - 2000
Building on two widely acclaimed previous editions, Craig Larman has updated this book to fully reflect the new UML 2 standard, to help you master the art of object design, and to promote high-impact, iterative, and skillful agile modeling practices.Developers and students will learn object-oriented analysis and design (OOA/D) through three iterations of two cohesive, start-to-finish case studies. These case studies incrementally introduce key skills, essential OO principles and patterns, UML notation, and best practices. You won’t just learn UML diagrams - you’ll learn how to apply UML in the context of OO software development.Drawing on his unsurpassed experience as a mentor and consultant, Larman helps you understand evolutionary requirements and use cases, domain object modeling, responsibility-driven design, essential OO design, layered architectures, “Gang of Four” design patterns, GRASP, iterative methods, an agile approach to the Unified Process (UP), and much more. This edition’s extensive improvements include:- A stronger focus on helping you master OOA/D through case studies that demonstrate key OO principles and patterns, while also applying the UML- New coverage of UML 2, Agile Modeling, Test-Driven Development, and refactoring- Many new tips on combining iterative and evolutionary development with OOA/D- Updates for easier study, including new learning aids and graphics- New college educator teaching resources- Guidance on applying the UP in a light, agile spirit, complementary with other iterative methods such as XP and Scrum- Techniques for applying the UML to documenting architectures- A new chapter on evolutionary requirements, and much moreApplying UML and Patterns, Third Edition, is a lucid and practical introduction to thinking and designing with objects - and creating systems that are well crafted, robust, and maintainable.
Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
Stuart Russell - 1994
The long-anticipated revision of this best-selling text offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date introduction to the theory and practice of artificial intelligence. *NEW-Nontechnical learning material-Accompanies each part of the book. *NEW-The Internet as a sample application for intelligent systems-Added in several places including logical agents, planning, and natural language. *NEW-Increased coverage of material - Includes expanded coverage of: default reasoning and truth maintenance systems, including multi-agent/distributed AI and game theory; probabilistic approaches to learning including EM; more detailed descriptions of probabilistic inference algorithms. *NEW-Updated and expanded exercises-75% of the exercises are revised, with 100 new exercises. *NEW-On-line Java software. *Makes it easy for students to do projects on the web using intelligent agents. *A unified, agent-based approach to AI-Organizes the material around the task of building intelligent agents. *Comprehensive, up-to-date coverage-Includes a unified view of the field organized around the rational decision making pa
Thinking and Deciding
Jonathan Baron - 1988
In this, the fourth edition, Jonathan Baron retains the comprehensive attention to the key questions addressed in the previous editions - How should we think? What, if anything, keeps us from thinking that way? How can we improve our thinking and decision making? - and his expanded treatment of topics such as risk, utilitarianism, Baye's theorem, and moral thinking. With the student in mind, the fourth edition emphasizes the development of an understanding of the fundamental concepts in judgment and decision making. This book is essential reading for students and scholars in judgment and decision making and related fields, including psychology, economics, law, medicine, and business.
Software Requirements 3
Karl Wiegers - 1999
Two leaders in the requirements community have teamed up to deliver a contemporary set of practices covering the full range of requirements development and management activities on software projects. Describes practical, effective, field-tested techniques for managing the requirements engineering process from end to end. Provides examples demonstrating how requirements "good practices" can lead to fewer change requests, higher customer satisfaction, and lower development costs. Fully updated with contemporary examples and many new practices and techniques. Describes how to apply effective requirements practices to agile projects and numerous other special project situations. Targeted to business analysts, developers, project managers, and other software project stakeholders who have a general understanding of the software development process. Shares the insights gleaned from the authors' extensive experience delivering hundreds of software-requirements training courses, presentations, and webinars.New chapters are included on specifying data requirements, writing high-quality functional requirements, and requirements reuse. Considerable depth has been added on business requirements, elicitation techniques, and nonfunctional requirements. In addition, new chapters recommend effective requirements practices for various special project situations, including enhancement and replacement, packaged solutions, outsourced, business process automation, analytics and reporting, and embedded and other real-time systems projects.