Joel Spolsky and his blog, Joel on Software, are personal favorites. As a New Yorker [by employ, not residence], it's nice to know that one of the country's luminaries on software development is giving it the good college try in my neck of the woods.
Today he posted a "preliminary" reading list for his Fog Creek management training program. In Joel's own words, he's trying to compile:
- the best business books of all time
- the best software management books of all time
- and every worthwhile history of a software/computer company that we can find.
The list is a solid start, and I've personally added about a half dozen of books into my personal reading queue. That said, Joel invites recommendations and a few omissions immediately came to mind:
- Extraordinarily Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay -- Anyone that dealt with the technology bubble of of the late '90s needs only to read this book to understand that manias are a consistently repeated byproduct of the human condition.
- The Real Story of Informix Software and Phil White: Lessons in Business and Leadership for the Executive Team by Steve W. Martin -- Great story about the rise and fall of Informix that mixes a rich history of the database market with sobering tales of the measures some will take to get ahead at all costs.
- Service-Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology and Design by Thomas Erl -- Soup to nuts overview of SOA; how anyone involved in the software business can get by without understanding the subtleties of SOA is beyond me.
- The Success of Open Source by Steven Weber -- Although I don't necessarily agree with some of his conclusions, I respected the comprehensive look at the open source movement.
- The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun -- Comprehensive look at managing a software development project that, while technical and structured, didn't come off as purely academic like so many other books of this nature.
If anyone has any further thoughts, I'm always open to ideas. In the interim, hopefully Joel's trainees will be able to handle 18 hour days of coding AND reading a book per week.
joelonsoftware woodrow software programming readinglist tech
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