Resources for Software Engineers

Books

Not only very informative, they are a joy to read (yes, i mean it!). Highly recommended reading for budding software engineers.

Some books on software engineering (and programming) in general...

Old but gold...

• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Fred Brooks
  - A book packed with pure wisdom that has stood the test of time. Phillip Greenspun calls MMM "the only great book ever written on software engineering". I agree.
• Code Complete, Second Edition by Steve McConnell
  - This book contains many tips for writing better programs
• Peopleware - Productive Projects and Teams by Tom De Marco and Tim Lister
  - A popular, and really insighful, book about software project management. Full of easy-to-read anecdotes and hard-learned lessons from the real world.
  

More recent...

• The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt, David Thomas
• Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert C. Martin

Books on patterns

Old but gold...

• Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series) by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides
  - Commonly referred to as GOF book (GOF -> Gang of Four, i.e., the four authors), fourth gang member is no more!

More recent...

• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler
• Analysis Patterns : Reusable Object Models by Martin Fowler

Books on software process

• Extreme Programming Explained : Embrace Change (2nd Edition) by Kent Beck
• Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices by Robert C. Martin

Other software books

• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, John Brant, William Opdyke, Don Roberts
• Test Driven Development: By Example by Kent Beck

Novels!!

• CUCKOO'S EGG by Clifford Stoll - Astrophysicist Stoll's pursuit of a hacker trying to access American computer networks. Based on a real story. I really liked it.

Articles, Web Sites

Informative

• Don't live with broken windows - A conversation with Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas. Talks about how 'broken windows theory' relates to keeping our software clean (hint: it's got nothing to do with Microsoft Windows)
• Seven Habits of Highly Effective Programmers by Philip Chu
• The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond
  
• SD Times - A magazine on software development. Back issues are downloadable as PDF (free).
• Join The Code Project to get daily updates of programming-related articles
• Software engineering related quotes that I like

Interesting/Funny

• Waterfall2006 - After years of being disparaged by some in the software development community, the waterfall process is back with a vengeance. Or is it?
• The Quine Page - Programs that generate a copy of their own source text as its complete output
• Hello World Page - How to write a 'hello world!' program in many different languages

Other Places to Look for Software Engineering Resources

• Brad Appleton's Software Engineering Links - Huge list of links to various SE resources
• IEEE's Software Engineering Online portal
• Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon

*You think you've read better stuff? I'm interested to know. Drop me an email.

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