The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition)

Not that I am or ever have been a manager of SDEs... but this book seems to hit the nail on the head in regards to my personal observations. Mr. Brooks claims that to be a software developer, one must be an eternal optimist: This will be the last bug! Just one more test cycle, and we'll reach perfection!

Mr. Brooks' way of capturing the essence of what it means to build software resonates with me, and I think it will with you as well.

This is truly a must read. Many have said that this book is quite out date, and I don't outright deny that charge. However, it is still very relevant and helpful. I found at least half of the chapters to be very sharply applicable to today's software engineer. If you have any involvement on any organized software project, please do yourself a favour and get this book!

"For picking the milestones there is only one relevant rule.
Milestones must be concrete, specific, measurable events,
defined with knife-edge sharpness."
[The Mythical Man-Month]
Do not expect theory, nor processes, nor checklists... expect wisdom. Mr. Brooks is, in the form of accessible esseys, portraying his experiences with large software project(s). Majority of the problem areas and lessons learned mentioned in the book are valid till these days. Excellent. Kind regards, Mario.

This book spells out what you already know about writing/managing
sofware/software projects -- and a lot more you never though of.
It's especially interesting to see that the problems haven't
changed much; even with "extreme" and "agile" and all the other
methods and buzzwords.

With no gender bias intended, this book needs to be read by that
manager with one pregnant programmer who can't understand
why he just can't hire another female programmer and get the job
done in 4 1/2 months instead of 9. I've worked with more than one
manager that really did think that way.

One of the most essential software books ever written. Up there
with Kernighan, Ritchie, Van Der Linden, Koenig, et. al.

A classic, and for good reason. Although seemingly dated, Brooks addresses timeless ideas that affect any complex undertaking. A few selected quotes will illustrate why Brooks is never dull:

"our estimating techniques fallaciously confuse effort with progress, hiding the assumption that men and months are interchangeable."

"when schedule slippage is recognized, the natural (and traditional) response is to add more manpower. Like dousing a fire with gasoline, this makes matters worse..."

"Because the medium [i.e. software] is tractable, we expect few difficulties in implementation; hence our pervasive optimism. Because our ideas are faulty, we have bugs; hence our optimism is unjustified."

For the last 20+ years I've recommended this book to every misguided project planner I've encountered. Everyone who reads it, enjoys it and learns from it. If I had to predict which books on computing would still be worth reading in 100 years, this is the one I'd bet on...