Of course MS cares! Have a look at this video: WSYP Project[^] :laugh:

Regards, Ricardo Corona

rickyvj wrote:

As someone already said, reading is just a complement to experience, not a replacement.

Likewise, an experienced programmer becomes obsolete without reading.

Regards, Ricardo Corona

Chris Losinger wrote:

meh. the point you'd really want to make is that people who read books don't make those mistakes. but if you actually tried to make that point, i'd ask to see your data.

How would you know my point better than myself? Anyway granted, a lot of programmers who read programming books do the same and worse mistakes. But they are simply lousy programmers, and would remain lousy with or without reading. My point would really be that I don't see how anyone could learn concepts like modeling, methodologies, frameworks, algorithms, etc., without reading or attending a class -which you also despise-. I wonder how you've learnt these concepts by just reading source code. I must agree with you, however, that many programming books are bad. Most of them show you how to code in a particular language through sample code and algorithms, but they don't teach you how to write applications using a certain methodology -for which a chosen language is needed-.

Chris Losinger wrote:

what on earth could you mean by that? personally, i read about a book a month: fiction, non-fiction, scientific, essays, whatever looks good - but none of them are programming books.

Good for you. I didn't mean for you taking it personally, but I've known quite a few students & programmers who hate reading programming books just because they don't like reading any kind of books.

Regards, Ricardo Corona

Where did you get that? I didn't even question the list as I must admit I haven't read all of the books. What I said was that most replies were not answered re. software engineering books but about programming books. I agree with you that Knuth's & DD&H books should be in any software engineer or programmer's bookshelf.

Regards, Ricardo Corona

I think everybody is missing the point: software engineering books aren't books about programming, but about managing the software development process, from inception to delivery. Re. the original question, I like "Object-Oriented Software Engineering" by Bernd Bruegge and Allen H. Dutoit, although it's somewhat repetitive. I don't agree with reference books like Booch, Rumbaugh and Jacobson's UML book being in the list. This is just an UML reference book, but doesn't do very good in teaching a SE methodology. "The Mythical Man Month" may be technically outdated, but it's a classic. A must-read for every software engineer. As for the people who hate reading programming books (and I wonder if they even read any kind of book), I've seen too many of the kind writing (or rather copying and patching) code they don't understand, yielding to error-prone, unmantainable, non-reusable code.

Regards, Ricardo Corona

Don't give up - Peter Gabriel (with Kate Bush).

Regards, Ricardo

You can answer it interactively here: The World's Easiest Quiz[^]

Regards, Ricardo Corona

Agreed. But the book that really changed my programming style and influenced my teaching to hundreds of students in the 80s was "Introduction to Pascal" by Jim Welsh & John Elder. By the way, did you hear that Crichton just died this week?

Regards, Ricardo Corona

Well, I think the simple answer to your question is argouml at http://argouml.tigris.org/[^]. Just click below the "Launch via Java Web Start" title. It works pretty well. :suss:

Regards, Ricardo Corona

Or else, get a Mac.:cool: