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Ask HN: Good books for my non-technical cofounder on software development

by Sevii on 7/18/24, 4:16 PM with 5 comments

• by gus_massa on 7/19/24, 1:17 AM

  I don't understand "why" he must understand how software development works.

  Is he making unrealistic requests?

  Does he think you are wasting your whole day in notepad instead of doing real work?

  When you tell him about a new cool rebase trick in git, he only stares without understanding a word?

  Anyway, a book is too long. My recommendation is to try to find some nice post in the old blog of Joel Spolsky https://www.joelonsoftware.com/

• by muzani on 7/19/24, 7:56 AM

  Strong recommendation for The Pragmatic Programmer, Andy Hunt & Dave Thomas.

  Agile Manifesto, which many "agile" techniques often forget as well: https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

  Test-Driven Development by Example, by Kent Beck. No other. Kent Beck doesn't even show up on the first page of Google anymore. The book is on page 6. But it's a human way to develop software, dealing with the human limits of the average programmer. The book is easier to read than most of the articles written about it.

• by Doctor-R on 7/18/24, 6:16 PM

  The Mythical Man Month by Frederick Brooks. The examples are old, but the wisdom remains. Particularly the chapter (and CACM article) No Silver Bullet-- Essence and Accident in Software Engineering (1986).

  Or just: https://xkcd.com/1425/