One thing that is always helpful is for people in a profession to read some "core" books so that people can all be on the same page. I'm not talking about those "learn [some tech] in 24 hours!!" books. It means that when people have said that they've read them, but if they don't follow the books then you have a whole library to hit them upside the head!
For software development, I'd recomend a couple:
- Java - Effective Java by Joshua Bloch
- UI design - Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
- general project management - The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks (a summary would be enough...)
- software dev - just about anything by Martin Fowler
- working in the government - Cat Herding and You
That's just a couple off the top of my head. What would you get people to read?
Update: added link for UI design
The Tipping Point
ReplyDeleteThe Cluetrain Manifesto
XP Explained (the white book)
Reading the Mythical Man-Month is no joke. The book is 32 years old and people are STILL making the same mistakes! Show's how much our industry learns from the past, eh? A course on The History of Software Project Management should be required for Software Engineering grads -- and MMM should be the first lesson.
bonus:
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
anything by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Here's a couple Books that I recommend:
ReplyDeleteMastering Regular Expressions, By Jeffrey Friedl
Every programmer should know regular expressions. Once you understand them, you will find string parsing much easier. Ryan's right, a history on the history of software project management is important, however many of us aren't on the management side, and would greatly benefit from learning more programming tricks.
This brings up one of my favourite articles from worse than failure.
http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/I-Didn%E2%80%99t-Know-You-Could-Do-That!.aspx
The more tricks you know, the easier it is to find a good solution to the problem you are facing.
Thanks for the links guys!
ReplyDeleteKibbee, as per the wtf that you linked to, it appears that in that case, more info didn't allow the person to solve the problem easier, it just allowed them to screw up more. ;-)
Ok, maybe this comic would present my message better.
ReplyDeletehttp://xkcd.com/208/