131–140 of 140 posts
Posting it here since the author has kindly allowed me to share this file with my colleagues in order to familiarize them with the ideas laid out in the book. Also, seems like the paper version is no longer available on Amazon, so I don't see any other way. Especially since the author's goal was to leave a heritage.
I can recommend a Philosophy of Software Design Paperback by John Ousterhout. I've been programming for 15 years and it closely parallels my own current beliefs about programming. He stands above the lower aspects of programming/code/modules, raising the discussion to a conceptual level, that you seem to be wanting. I think there were only 2 areas out of approximately 10 that I thought I had a few better ideas but a)…
His idea to keep interfaces small and powerful bothered me - I don’t think it expresses any truth about programming despite being a good rule of thumb. I kept feeling frustrated while reading. The lambda calculus has the best interface to functionality ratio possible but you don’t see humans using it to program. This objection led me to the conclusion that a better heuristic would be: programs should try to communica…
https://www.amazon.com/Structures-Things-Dont-Fall-Down/dp/0...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Essentially, in Chinese philosophy, any given situation has a propensity (water tends to run downhill). It is therefore more effective to work with that propensity, than it is to work heroically against that propensity. Interesting, this is similar to the Hindu/Indic idea of dharma (e.g. the dharma of water is to flow) and the idea of working with/towards dharma (both of oneself and the world generally). (Dharma re…
The notion of propensity/flow made me question if one's life is not best when being able to see and surf trends as you need. Tiny soft and round exchanges between all parties.. a kind of dance.
You did say philosophy of engineering, right? Look no further than “The Specialist” by Charles Sale “YOU'VE heard a lot of pratin' and prattlin' about this bein' the age of specialization. I'm a carpenter by trade. At one time I could of built a house, barn, church, or chicken coop. But I seen the need of a specialist in my line, so I studied her. I got her, she's mine. Gentlemen, you are face to face with the champi…
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
I've never understood what engineers find in this book. It looks like a shallow kitchen philosophy of a guy next door to me. What you think is so good about this book for engineers, in a nutshell?
Books:
- Rickover's "The Never-Ending Challenge of Engineering"
- Taichi Ohno's "WorkPlace Management"
The Design Of Everyday Things by Don Norman might be something of interest https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/840
Seconding this. It's an important book for all kinds of design I would also recommend "Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship" by Robert C. Martin. It focuses on crafting higher quality code, which is the property of it not only running well, but being easy to understand and to work on
That book is a top three software book for me. It made me understand why OO is a thing and what concepts I should pretty much always use from that ecosystem.
The concept of interfaces (not just the programming construct, but the general idea) was massive and it changed my view on the testability of code.
Martin has some other good stuff related to professionalism as a programmer. He has a few talks and The Clean Coder and those are absolutely worth it as well.
It's not a book, but it's a place to go to lead to things to continue the search.