The Phoenix Project.
Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
81–90 of 140 posts
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#82cannot recommend sicp enough: https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/b...
uses scheme to illustrate how to think about computation abstractly.
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#83Two books that did for me what I think you are looking for:
- From Mathematics to Generic Programming by Stepanov & Rose
- Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Hofstadter
- The Little Schemer / The Seasoned Schemer
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#84I 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)…
Haven't read this, but based on looking through the table of contents (so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt), I agree with your choice. You mentioned that you've been programming for awhile, you might have heard of Grady Booch and "Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications." Object oriented techniques has fallen a little out of fashion now, which may be part of the reason why this book isn't as popular, but it was big around 20 years ago. It also discusses on the many topics of your choice:
- Complexity, what it is and how to manage it
- Encapsulation (Information Hiding).
- Interfaces - contracts for your encapsulated code
- Abstraction
And am certain that Grady Booch's book was itself mostly based on older material.
I also really like any really good book on doing requirements (they all have 80% of the same info). Getting the true needs of all your stakeholders (your users, the business people, the devs themselves, and the technical needs of the system) is probably the step that is done the poorest in most organizations, and the one that could save project the most time and money if done well.
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#85I enjoyed The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn by Richard Hamming a lot.
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Doing-Science-Engineering-Learnin...
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#86You 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 champion privybuilder of Sangamon County.”
Sometimes the best books are also the shortest.
https://www.toiletrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Spec...
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#87This book is probably about a very different kind of ”engineering” than what you had in mind, but it’s been highly influential to my thinking:
“The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge.” Berger & Luckmann 1966.
Perhaps the core insight to me is that not only does every practice of engineering exist as embedded in the context of a socially constructed reality, but the practice of engineering itself also fundamentally involves the continual construction of such realities. In other words, for a software engineer to be able to do their job, they must among other things be a kind of applied social epistemologist.
I expect this framing doesn’t make much sense to many readers — I’m hoping the following articles might serve to illustrate:
“Programming as Theory Building.” Peter Naur, Microprocessing and Microprogramming 1985 (https://doi.org/10.1016/0165-6074(85)90032-8)
> … suggests that programming properly should be regarded as an activity by which the programmers form or achieve a certain kind of insight, a theory, of the matters at hand. This suggestion is in contrast to what appears to be a more common notion, that programming should be regarded as a production of a program and certain other texts.
“Interpretation, Interaction and Reality Construction in Software Engineering: An Explanatory Model.” Kari Rönkkö, Information and Software Technology 2007 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2007.02.014)
> Floyd’s paper Outline of a Paradigm Change in Software Engineering requested that we move from a product oriented paradigm to a process oriented paradigm.
> Naur’s paper Programming as Theory Building made it painfully clear to us that exemplary resources in the form of material and available support are not enough when modifying others’ programs. In fact, if Floyd’s claims had been taken seriously by the software developers in Naur’s study, and if the same developers had access to an explanatory model … their difficulties could have been both anticipated and prevented.
> This article … explains from a natural language point of view, how interpretation takes place, and discusses the consequences of this in relation to interaction and reality construction in software engineering practice.
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#88Don't overlook books that are critical of engineering as it is often practiced and how it fits into our society: Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum (1976). Weizenbaum wrote Eliza, the first AI chatbot, almost sixty years ago and was appalled at the reception. This book is still very pertinent, especially the Introduction, Chapter 1 On Tools, chapter 9, Incomprehensible Programs, and chapter 10, Agai…
A critical book I enjoyed when I read it (before starting my career) was The Real World of Technology: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1291973. Worth it just for the first chapter where she defines technology as practice, which helps clarify why the classic “technology X is a neutral tool that can be used for good or ill” argument isn’t very satisfying.
That said, I haven’t read it in a long time so not sure how well it holds up.
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#89I 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)…
I was about to recommend the same book - lots of good nuggets of wisdom in here, without the dogma you sometimes find in this kind of literature.
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#90Safeware by Nancy Leveson.