[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
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Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
I am a software engineer by passion. I love computers, I am
curious. I love to learn new things / concepts. I love to see the
beauty in existing concepts being applied in completely unexpected
ways, which makes you wonder that every boring thing has myriad of
variations which are not obvious. Through my college education &
industry experience & curiosity, I have learned a lot. But, even
after trying to search about books on the philosophy of engineering
or the art / craft of engineering - I have fallen short. I would
love to hear what books / and projects that you have seen that have
inspired you as an engineer & have provided you with your own
philosophy of engineering. I am talking about general
"engineering" here, not just specifically "software engineering".
Requesting the universe to enlighten me :)
Author : s3micolon0
Score : 139 points
Date : 2024-01-19 16:23 UTC (6 hours ago)
| c6400sc wrote:
| Normal Accidents and To Engineer is Human are two popular and
| great books.
| mezod wrote:
| Probably not what you are asking for but thought they might be
| worth a look
|
| - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61899637-philosophy-of-c...
|
| - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60965426-the-creative-ac...
|
| - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/530415.The_Art_of_Doing_...
| jpiburn wrote:
| I second Rick Rubins book
| throwaway888abc wrote:
| Trying to stick to bellow as much as possible all the time:
|
| "Keep it simple, stupid!"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle
|
| The Basecamp's books are enjoyable, recommending
| https://basecamp.com/books/rework
| jpiburn wrote:
| The Design Of Everyday Things by Don Norman might be something of
| interest
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/840
| Minor49er wrote:
| Seconding this. It's an important book for all kinds of design
|
| I would also recommend "Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile
| Software Craftsmanship" by Robert C. Martin. It focuses on
| crafting higher quality code, which is the property of it not
| only running well, but being easy to understand and to work on
| NukedOne wrote:
| I'm curious as to how you feel about this[1]?
|
| [1]: https://qntm.org/clean
| mtillman wrote:
| * The Art of Unix Programming
|
| * The Art of Computer Programming
| hide1713 wrote:
| Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
| aristofun wrote:
| I've never understood what engineers find in this book. It
| looks like a shallow kitchen philosophy of a guy next door to
| me.
|
| What you think is so good about this book for engineers, in a
| nutshell?
| hyggetrold wrote:
| Did you read the whole book yourself or just skim it? (asking
| sincerely)
| detourdog wrote:
| I read the book completely. The book was on a second year
| reading list for my industrial design department.
|
| I absorbed as an introduction to the philosophical aspects
| of quality. Quality is truly a tough concept if approached
| as a universal truth.
| hyggetrold wrote:
| That makes sense to me. I'm not sure how to articulate
| what I got out of that book exactly but I did enjoy it.
| Some of the more 'spiritual' books I find, the value of
| them doesn't really hit you until you're older or have
| had some tragic life experiences happen. Until then some
| of it can just make you feel "this is some vapid feel-
| good hippie crap." Not saying that was your reaction of
| course but it makes sense to me why you might not vibe
| with it if you read it in a university setting.
| aristofun wrote:
| i've tried few times to fight through first several pages -
| it gets dead boring and meaningless right from beginning
| hosh wrote:
| The core thing is exploring just exactly what is subjective
| and what is objective, and whether quality is subjective or
| objective. Pirsig came up with an answer, and then goes on to
| talk about excellence (arete). Thinking back, this discourse
| seems like it was deliberately embedded in a kind of every
| day, guy-next-door narrative in order to touch on lived
| experience of "quality".
|
| Although Pirsig didn't explore it, quality is very much at
| the heart of any engineering, particularly when you try to
| quantify it. How effective is ISO-9000? GE was big on that.
| Boeing measured quality of their builds, until they
| compromised the process. What about Deming's approach (Total
| Quality Management)?
|
| What is quality in software engineering? (We often sidestep
| that question and call it Software Craftsmanship instead).
| And there's a whole can of worms when we try to apply this to
| AIs.
| timeagain wrote:
| +1. It can become a ramble at times and full-time philosophers
| seem to hate it. On the other hand, there is a lot of practical
| wisdom in the first half of the book, and what I consider to be
| a good payoff if you stick through to the end.
| weyj4 wrote:
| I've just purchased Richard Hamming's "The Art of Doing Science
| and Engineering" but haven't read it all yet, it looks pretty
| great.
| hyggetrold wrote:
| I read it last year and it is _fantastic_ - super absolutely
| ultra highly recommend that everybody read it. Run, don 't
| walk, towards this book!
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| It is a great book, and it includes an amazing essay by him
| titled _You and Your Research_ [0][1] - which explains why it
| is important to "always be learning".
|
| 0 - https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
|
| 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3msMuwqp-o (lecture
| version)
| random3 wrote:
| If you seek elightment, you seek truth. Look down towards
| foundations like physics, mathematics, logic and look back
| towards the past.
|
| It' smaybe check out the Computer History Museum.
|
| Read Feynman's (or about) books. "Surely you're joking, Mr
| Feynman" is light but profound. Max Tegmark's "Our Mathematical
| Universe" is great. "I am a strange loop" by Douglas Hofstadter
| will connect many dots. If you want to peek deeper - "Through two
| doors at once" describes experiments at the edge of our reality.
| "The singularity is near" is a good perspective that connects
| dots through time back many years to many in the future.
|
| These are just some incomplete starter points. It's deep,
| beautiful rabbit hole. Enjoy it.
| dankco wrote:
| I like to recommend "Kill It With Fire" by Marianne Bellotti. It
| is full of insights far beyond managing legacy systems (as the
| subtitle would have you believe) and does a great job of
| analyzing the technology and the people/organizations who build
| it.
| javiramos wrote:
| The Art of Doing Science and Engineering
| walterbell wrote:
| _The Ancient Engineers_ by L. Sprague de Camp (1963),
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8158385
| max_ wrote:
| Lewis Mumford's Books;
|
| - Technics & Civilization
|
| - The Culture of Cities
|
| - The Story of Utopias
|
| Lewis Mumford talks about technology, but from an anthropological
| pint of view.
|
| Another book I would recommend is _The Nature of Technology by
| Brian Arthur_
|
| The other I would recommend is James Burk's Connections he's has
| some books but I but the documentary is highly recommended.
| gooseyard wrote:
| Simon Winchester's "The Perfectionists" is worth reading
| ics wrote:
| I enjoyed _Engineering and the Mind 's Eye_ by Eugene Ferguson
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262560788/engineering-and-the-m...
| nshunter wrote:
| Came here looking for this one to be mentioned
| stared wrote:
| Tao Te Ching, seriously
|
| There is a lot of emphasis on simplicity and that things are the
| best when they work seamlessly.
|
| Chapter 17, from the translation by Derek Lin, which I
| wholeheartedly recommend: The highest rulers,
| people do not know they have them The next level, people
| love them and praise them The next level, people fear
| them The next level, people despise them
| drannex wrote:
| And if you want something a bit more relaxed and updated, The
| Dude De Ching[1], is quite good. It's a rewrite based around
| the core concepts of Dudeism, a fan-made spiritual practice
| based on the character "The Dude" from The Big Lebowski.
|
| > The rug is a fabrication which ties our ruminations together.
|
| 1. https://dudeism.com/thedudedeching/
|
| Edit: There is an online version available as well,
| https://aui.me/text/the-dude-de-ching/
| hyggetrold wrote:
| Another great translation is by Witter Bynner - the book is
| titled The Way of Life rather than Tao Te Ching.
| morelisp wrote:
| Discussed most recently/productively here at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37686713 I think.
| stared wrote:
| This very thread inspired me to read not only this book, but
| also this particular translation.
| therealmocker wrote:
| Read through the thread and didn't see references to the
| translation by Derek Lin, could you point to why you
| selected that version?
| stared wrote:
| It is in the linked post, not - comments.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| For Eastern Influence.
|
| I think AI Engineers would be interested in a more Zen take,
| examining 'conceptual mind', 'subjective experience'.
|
| ""The Zen Teaching of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind""
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/276779.The_Zen_Teaching_...
| hosh wrote:
| There are several ways to approach the Tao Te Ching, including
| the mystical, but I think that there's a great book that
| explains the underlying approach the Chinese have, called,
| Treatise on Efficacy.
|
| Essentially, in Chinese philosophy, any given situation has a
| propensity (water tends to run downhill). It is therefore more
| effective to work with that propensity, than it is to work
| heroically against that propensity. This is very much a layer
| in what the Tao Te Ching talks about.
| svat wrote:
| > _Essentially, in Chinese philosophy, any given situation
| has a propensity (water tends to run downhill). It is
| therefore more effective to work with that propensity, than
| it is to work heroically against that propensity._
|
| Interesting, this is similar to the Hindu/Indic idea of
| dharma (e.g. the dharma of water is to flow) and the idea of
| working with/towards dharma (both of oneself and the world
| generally). (Dharma refers to both the proper order of things
| and to the actions one takes to uphold it.)
|
| Edit: The "See also" section on the Wikipedia page for Rta is
| interesting:
|
| * Asha (Zoroastrianism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asha
|
| * Maat (Egyptian religion) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maat
|
| * Me (Sumerian religion)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_(mythology)
|
| * Tao (Chinese Taoism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao
|
| and a few others. In Hinduism there are Rta, Dharma, etc.
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%B9%9Ata
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma) (also in Buddhism
| Jainism etc)
| hosh wrote:
| What's also interesting to me is that there are enough
| similarities between Vedic and ancient Greek thought, and
| yet here we are with Aristolean ideas in the West, and in
| India, things went the way of the Puranas. (Treatise of
| Efficacy went into the flaw baked into Aristolean thoughts
| separating Theory and Practice, and how going with the
| propensity bypasses that).
|
| The Chinese word for this propensity of the situation is
| shi (Shi ), rather than dao (Dao ). There are other texts
| that talk about exploiting and profiting from propensity
| (shi), rather than what the Dao De Jing talks about with
| wei wuwei (Wei Wu Wei ).
| Cloudly wrote:
| I would recommend "The Things We Make" for an outlook into
| engineering mindsets through history. A good reminder that a lot
| of useful engineering comes before the theory can fully explain
| it :)
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/75598048
| drannex wrote:
| I can't understate just how _great_ "Waking Up: Overcoming the
| Obstacles to Human Potential" by Charles Tart (2001) is. It's a
| cross between engineering and the spirituality (although I argue,
| it's more on the philosophy and psychoanalysis of engineering
| than spiritual).
|
| I wrote a (short) review on the book directly after reading it
| here[1]. I've since reread the book, and while some of my
| opinions on it are the same, some I understand the nuance much
| more in context of the rest of the book, I need to update it.
|
| 1. https://macleodsawyer.com/books/waking-up/
| DanielBMarkham wrote:
| I wrote one which I do not promote, but I dropped by the forum
| and you asked.
|
| https://leanpub.com/info-ops/c/LeanpubWeeklySale2024Jan19
|
| Note: Book 2 is more code-centric, with active strategies to
| minimize solution complexity. This book is all about how to
| minimize to-do list complexity and tracking (which arguably is
| more important)
| kjqgqkejbfefn wrote:
| Heidegger's
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Question_Concerning_Techno...
| mcbishop wrote:
| A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout. The
| principles / approaches (e.g. problem disaggregation) apply to
| other engineering disciplines.
| jdelacueva wrote:
| Anything written by Langdon Winner
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langdon_Winner
|
| I would begin with "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" and continue
| with "Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme
| in Political Thought", M.I.T. Press, 1977.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| A city is not a tree. It is more about the limits of systems
| thinking. Must read for Smart-City IoT but applies to anything
| where you might think Tech is an easy fix to some social problem:
|
| http://worrydream.com/refs/Alexander%20-%20A%20City%20Is%20N...
| hyggetrold wrote:
| Yes! Christopher Alexander is a must-read for engineers. Notes
| on the Synthesis of Form is also very excellent.
| jonjacky wrote:
| Don'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, Against the
| Imperialism of Instrumental Reason. Chapter 4, Science and the
| Compulsive Programmer, is one of the first written accounts of
| the hacker culture.
|
| Weizenbaum's original paper on Eliza (1966) [0] is still very
| pertinent to the present generation of chatbots, especially the
| introduction and discussion.
|
| _Tools for Conviviality_ , Ivan Illich (1973) [1]. Influenced
| recent work by the computer scientists Steven Kell [2],[3] and
| Kartik Agaram [4].
|
| _Computation and Human Experience_ , Phil Agre (1997) (excerpt
| at [5]). Agre got a PhD in AI at MIT in the 80s and 90s and
| became very critical of the field. I think his shorter writings
| [6][7] are a better introduction, especially the personal memoir
| at [6]: "about how I became (relatively speaking, and in a small
| way) a better person through philosophy."
|
| 0. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/365153.365168
|
| 1. http://akkartik.name/illich.pdf
|
| 2. https://www.humprog.org/~stephen//research/talks/kell19de-
| es...
|
| 3.
| https://www.humprog.org/~stephen//research/talks/kell19softw...
|
| 4. http://akkartik.name/akkartik-convivial-20200607.pdf
|
| 5. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/che-intro.html
|
| 6. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/notes/00-7-12.html
|
| 7. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/critical.html
| undershirt wrote:
| I'll second this. A philosophy for engineering is nestled I
| think in the larger "philosophy of technology", but this field
| of philosophy has traditionally been a lot more critical of
| technology than most of us can stomach today. This is a really
| good map of the field that not many know about, written in
| 1995:
|
| https://shaunlebron.github.io/chandler-1995.pdf
| jsenn wrote:
| 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.
| morelisp wrote:
| _Aramis, or the Love of Technology_.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Systemantics, AKA "The Systems Bible: The Beginner's Guide to
| Systems Large and Small" by John Gall.
|
| It is offered from the perspective of how not to design systems,
| based on system engineering failures. The primary precept of the
| treatise is that large complex systems are extremely difficult to
| design correctly despite best intentions, so care must be taken
| to design smaller, less-complex systems and to do so with
| incremental functionality based on close and continual touch with
| user needs and measures of effectiveness.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics
| wenc wrote:
| "The effective engineer" by Edmond Lau is a good book for the IC
| software engineer working in an engineering organization.
|
| The most influential content on engineering in my life is not in
| a book but a YouTube talk entitled How Complex Systems Fail by
| Richard Cook, which is about designing resilient systems. I've
| applied these ideas to many aspects of life, not just
| engineering.
| shagie wrote:
| Philosophy of Computer Science: An Introduction to the Issues and
| the Literature
|
| by William J. Rapaport - (
| https://www.apaonline.org/news/254862/William-Rapaport-is-th... )
|
| > The APA is pleased to announce that William Rapaport
| (University at Buffalo) has been selected by the APA committee on
| philosophy and computers as the winner of the 2015 Barwise Prize!
|
| This corresponds to the class
| https://cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/510.html
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
|
| The table of contents can be read at https://www.wiley.com/en-
| us/Philosophy+of+Computer+Science%3...
|
| You are likely interested in sections 3.12 through 3.18
| 3.12 CS as Engineering 64 3.13 Science xor Engineering?
| 66 3.14 CS as "Both" 66 3.15 CS as "More" 68
| 3.15.1 CS as a New Kind of Science 68 3.15.2 CS as a New
| Kind of Engineering 70 3.16 CS as "Neither" 71
| 3.16.1 CS as Art 71 3.16.2 CS as the Study of Complexity
| 71 3.16.3 CS as the Philosophy(!) of Procedures 72
| 3.16.4 CS as Computational Thinking 72 3.16.5 CS as AI 73
| 3.16.6 Is CS Magic? 74 3.17 Summary 76 3.18
| Questions for the Reader 77
|
| And section 5 which starts out with: 5
| Engineering 95 5.1 Defining 'Engineering' 95 5.2
| Engineering as Science 97 5.3 A Brief History of
| Engineering 98 5.4 Conceptions of Engineering 99
| 5.5 What Engineers Do 100
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Coincidentally I just started reading _Engineering: A Very Short
| Introduction_ by David Blockley. I was very excited after the
| first chapter: it has a lot of profound ideas about engineering
| at large. Did you know that "engineer" does not derive from
| "someone who cares for Industrial Revolution era engines" but
| rather stems from a Latin / old French word for "ingenious"?? The
| second chapter feels a bit thrown together; i.e. the author seems
| to struggle a bit to unite all the events coherently. I think
| it's safe to say however that this book will give a broad
| overview of the long-term historical trends in the discipline,
| which is foundational for any type of philosophical
| understanding.
|
| P.S. I love the VSI series. Fits in my back pocket and usually
| gives a satisfying overview of a discipline. I always get a few
| fascinating ideas from every book. I've read probably 20 from the
| series at this point.
| kesavvaranasi wrote:
| For software engineering, I recommend A Philosophy of Software
| Design. It has principles that I think translate well to other
| engineering fields.
|
| For engineering in general: To Engineer is Human - Henry Petroski
| The Art of Doing Science and Engineering - Richard Hamming
| Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down - J.E. Gordon
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| Not totally what you are looking for, but I'd highlghly recommend
| "Apollo" by Murray and Cox. It focuses on the engineering history
| of the Apollo program, and it is a superbly well written and
| researched worked and so many of the stories are about
| engineering philosophy that I think it'll really be worth your
| while.
| roarcher wrote:
| In a similar vein, there's "Skunk Works" by Ben Rich and Leo
| Janos, which covers the development of the U-2, F-117, and
| SR-17 aircraft. Not about the philosophy of engineering per se,
| but it's a great perspective into how problems were solved in a
| very unique program with extreme goals, before modern computer-
| aided tools.
| pjmorris wrote:
| Seconded, phenomenal book and suggestion.
|
| IMO in a similar vein is 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb',
| Richard Rhodes, another industry- and world-reshaping project.
| philip1209 wrote:
| I recommend Shop Class as Soulcraft, which contrasts blue-collar
| work (motorcycle repair) with knowledge work. It's not
| specifically "tech"-related, but it does a good job of exploring
| how corporatization has diminished the ability to be a
| craftsperson in modern careers.
| trentnix wrote:
| +1
|
| I thought _Shop Class as Soulcraft_ was _excellent_ and found
| the author 's theories on the lack of job and life satisfaction
| among those doing "knowledge work" compelling.
|
| It reminded me of the movie Margin Call when Kevin Spacey's
| character, who manages a trading floor for a wall street
| investment firm, laments that if he'd been a ditch digger, at
| least he'd have a bunch of holes left behind as evidence he
| accomplished something.
| Pamar wrote:
| You can get an overview of "Shop Class as Soulcraft" here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8280379
| jsf01 wrote:
| Richard Hamming's The Art of Doing Science and Engineering is one
| that's really shaped my philosophy on CS. It pushes for the
| importance of reasoning from first principles, experimentation,
| and taking on extraordinary work. There's also a fascinating and
| prescient section on AI and the limits of computers and how we
| think about them. Stripe Press makes a nicely bound hardcover
| edition of the book, too:
|
| https://press.stripe.com/the-art-of-doing-science-and-engine...
|
| Heartily recommend!
| s3micolon0 wrote:
| I am so happy to get all these responses! All of the resources
| look interesting!! I am going to start with Richard Hamming's The
| Art of Doing Science & Engineering. It looks to be something to
| get started.
|
| I have been wondering this question ever since, I wish I had
| reached out to request help earlier. I am glad I did,
| nonetheless. I am 26, hope there is a lot more to learn, apply &
| build.
|
| I am grateful to the universe (and the internet/hackernews).
| Thank you :)
| saintblasphemer wrote:
| The Sciences of the Artificial by Herbert A. Simon. Absolutely
| foundational.
| matesitox wrote:
| The Things We Make by Bill Hammack
| matesitox wrote:
| The Things We Make by Bill Hammack
|
| Changed my way of understanding what engineering is. Read the
| chaoter on designing cathedrals without math, science or
| modelling.
| NegatioN wrote:
| I'm not sure if these books really are what you're looking for,
| because each of them is a mix of engineering history, and the
| description of how a group of people end up doing amazing things.
| In each of the books, there were nuggets of wisdom that I've
| tried to bring along with me in my job (as best I can). Like:
|
| - Doing things as simply as possible to start off
|
| - Keeping iteration time to a minimum, for maximum exploration of
| ideas
|
| - Being willing to think outside the box
|
| My takeaways above, hardly do these books justice, but they are
| as follows:
|
| - Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed [0]
|
| - Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. [1]
|
| - The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That
| Made Computing Personal [2]
|
| [0]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101438.Skunk_Works
|
| [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56829.Hackers
|
| [2]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/722412.The_Dream_Machine
| dstroot wrote:
| +1 for Skunk Works. Great story, well written and the
| engineering challenges they overcame were astounding.
| a_c wrote:
| The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human
| Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter
|
| Engineers (and scientists) often boast ourselves as master of
| causality. We solve problem by understanding the domain. We laugh
| people as cargo-culting - not knowing why one does things. The
| Secret of Our Success shows it is a feature rather than a bug.
| The effect of "culture" takes much longer to manifest, often
| beyond our comprehension. One example given by the book is how we
| process cassava, lots of superfluous ritual. Without those
| processing culture, people get poisoned slowly. Only with modern
| chemistry do we comprehend the full extend of those ritual. But
| people have been eating cassava way before modern science were
| available. Similar can be said about medicine, lots of folk
| remedies don't work. But when they do, they do. Is not
| understanding a feature or a bug?
|
| With the advent of LLM, things seem to come in full cycle. We now
| prompt the engine and get a result/an opinion of sort. No longer
| is understanding required. I see the use of LLM in software
| engineering very anti-engineering, hindrance to learning and
| understanding. But it might not be a bug after all.
| R41 wrote:
| I recommend Marvin Minisckys society of minds book. He was one of
| founding fathers of AI tech, the book tells lot about human mind
| an Interesting read.
| RyanHamilton wrote:
| I 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)He may have simplifying it
| to more easily allow explanation. b) His explanations are much
| better than mine and if I tried to explain it, maybe I'd fail.
| computerdork wrote:
| 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.
| ducharmdev wrote:
| 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.
| yourcelf wrote:
| It may be a bit more zoomed out than what you're looking for if
| you're specifically looking at philosophical treatments of the
| practice of engineering, but Andrew Feenberg's "Questioning
| Technology" is excellent introduction to the philosophy of
| technology, particularly exploring the interplay between
| technological constraint and political/economic/social drivers of
| its development.
|
| "Philosophy of Technology" in general is a pretty rich field with
| a long history, and you might find more references in it than in
| engineering specifically.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| Risk Society by Ulrich Beck is one that I enjoyed. Make sure to
| get it used; the new prices are crazy
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Risk-Society-Modernity-Published-asso...
| waingake wrote:
| Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
| pjmorris wrote:
| A couple favorites that haven't been mentioned:
|
| 'An Introduction to General Systems Thinking', Weinberg, and he's
| got a dozen more worthwhile books behind it.
|
| 'The Logic of Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex
| Situations', Dietrich Dorner
| pixelmonkey wrote:
| I love your passion!
|
| When I was CTO of a software startup, I wrote a blog post
| reviewing various books about engineering and software teams,
| neatly organized into six sections. The three sections that you
| might find interesting, each featuring a few relevant books:
|
| - Debugging dysfunctional product cultures:
| https://amontalenti.com/2020/11/28/definitive-reading-list#d...
|
| - The psychology of deep work:
| https://amontalenti.com/2020/11/28/definitive-reading-list#p...
|
| - Programmer mindset and philosophy:
| https://amontalenti.com/2020/11/28/definitive-reading-list#p...
| robto wrote:
| They say naming is one of the hard problems of computer science,
| but there's not much concrete work addressing it.
|
| I'd recommend Elements of Clojure[0].
|
| Don't be fooled by the title, it's not really about Clojure, it
| just uses Clojure as an illustration as it discusses a very
| subtle general problem. From the website:
|
| > The first chapter, Names, explains why names define the
| structure of our software, and how to judge whether a name is any
| good.
|
| > The second chapter, Idioms, provides specific, syntactic advice
| for writing Clojure which is clean and readable.
|
| > The third chapter, Indirection, looks at how code can be made
| simpler and more robust through separation.
|
| > The final chapter, Composition, explores how the constituent
| pieces of our code can be combined into an effective whole.
|
| I find it a thoughtful and considerate overview of an area that
| everybody has some implicit knowledge of, and something that
| leads to a more abstract concept of quality.
|
| [0]https://elementsofclojure.com/
| Loic wrote:
| In How to Build Impossible Things, Ellison tells the story of his
| unconventional education in the world of architecture and design,
| and how he learned the satisfaction and joy that comes from doing
| something well for a long time.
|
| https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/447751/how-to-build-impossib...
|
| Enjoyable, not a philosophy of engineering but philosophy with
| engineering.
| JojoFatsani wrote:
| The Phoenix Project.
| nikhilsimha wrote:
| cannot recommend sicp enough: https://mitp-content-
| server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/b...
|
| uses scheme to illustrate how to think about computation
| abstractly.
| troupe wrote:
| Two books that did for me what I think you are looking for:
|
| - From Mathematics to Generic Programming by Stepanov & Rose
|
| - Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Hofstadter
|
| - The Little Schemer / The Seasoned Schemer
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| I 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...
| rjrodger wrote:
| You 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...
| Ezku wrote:
| This 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 Ronkko,
| 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._
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| _Safeware_ by Nancy Leveson.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Nobody has mentioned the "Do Committees invent" paper by Melvin
| Conway. It's the origin of Conway law, but the actual paper is
| way deeper than that
|
| https://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html
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