Will Partain's recommended reading list
Over time, I seem to be recommending the same books, papers,
Web sites, and so forth, over and over again. Here's a
disorganized list.
- Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, by
Tom
DeMarco and Tim
Lister, Dorset House, 1987 (a 1998 version is rumored).
-
About how to do a software (or just about any...)
project. Absolutely fantastic, a minor classic;
its only shortcoming is that not enough
managers read it.
- The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software
Engineering, Twentieth Anniversary Edition, by Frederick P. Brooks,,
Jr., Addison-Wesley, 1995.
-
A not-so-minor classic, albeit under-read (sigh). Buy a
copy instantly if these phrases don't ring a bell:
- Conceptual integrity;
- Second system effect;
- Plan to throw one away; and (of course)
- Brooks's Law.
- Jakob Nielsen's web
site on Web usability
- Most Web sites are appalling, and Nielsen is
onto the basic reasons why. For something more of a thought
piece, I like ``The
Anti-Mac Interface''.
Nielsen is now in the consulting business with Don Norman, author of The
Design of Everyday Things; their joint site is worth a
drop-in, too.
Finally, some less-weighty more-ephemeral articles:
Will Partain,
partain@dcs.gla.ac.uk;
1998-12-26.