Required Reading -- CS Systems

This is just a start at present...there are many other great works I should consider adding and no doubt many which I have yet to encounter myself. -- amd

• Butler Lampson, "Hints for Computer System Design", IEEE Software, January 1984 (earlier version 9th SOSP, Oct. 83)
• Donald Knuth. "Empirical Studies of FORTRAN Programs", Software Practice and Experience, v1n1p105-133, 1971.
• Henry Petroski
  • "History and Failure", American Scientist v80n6p523, Nov/Dec. 1992. (this is a short/easy starter, but you want to read the full story in To Engineer...)
  • To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Engineering Design
  • probably others, I'm still reading...
• Fred Brooks, Mythical Man Month
• Richard P. Gabriel, "Lisp: Good News, Bad News, How to Win Big", [HTML] (colloquially known as "Worse is Better" due to the key section by that title)
  also "Worse is Better Is Worse" and other follow ons [Gabriel's page with the history and links to the series]
• Eric S. Raymond. "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" [HTML]
• Eliyahu Goldratt
  • The Goal
  • It's Not Luck
    • for a more practical guide: H. William Dettmer, Goldratt's Theory of Constraints.
  • Critical Chain
• Santiago Ramón Cajal. Advice for a Young Investigator, first printing 1897, current english translation MIT Press 1999.
• J. Salzer, D. Reed, and D. Clark. "End-To-End Arguments in System Design", ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, v2n4p277-288, Nov. 1984. [PDF]
• Charles Perrow. The Next Catastrophe: Reducing our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters, Princeton University Press, 2007.
• Karl T. Ulrich and Steven D. Eppinger. Product Design and Development, McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1995
  • I'm not sure this is the definitive book on this subject, but I do think every good computer engineer (hardware or software) should be exposed to these ideas.
• Alan Cooper. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity, Sams -- Pearson Education, 2004.