List of My Book Reviews
A “fun” book is one that makes me learn seamlessly, not that makes me “laugh” — the learning fun is ever-lasting, the laughing fun lasts only until I turn the page. ~ Alberto Dell’Era
Book categories are in bold.
Epic Screwups
A classic book on failures is Levy & Salvadori’s Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail (ca 1992).
Under Hammurabic law, if a building fell down and killed somebody, the architect was killed too — and that this led to modern architecture firms being partnerships instead of corporations, with personal liability for the architect when he puts his seal on plans.
In Roman times when building an arch the engineer was required to stand underneath it as the construction scaffolding and trusses were removed.
Recipes (Cookbooks), Puzzles, Traps & Pitfalls
go here
Monolithic FAQ-style Software Engineering Books
Question: How do I use test-driven development when creating a new feature for an existing codebase without any tests?
Book Smarts Answer: Michael Feathers’ Working Effectively With Legacy Code.
Street Smarts Answer: Long-term, you will find it more fulfilling emotionally to work for a company where all their code is already tested!
