SAFETY-CRITICAL: Safety-Critical Computer Systems (BOOK)

For systems engineering, another "bible" (costing ~500USD new):
Amazon.com: Buying Choices: Safety Critical Computer Systems

PS: Look at the price, new! :)

BOOK: Beautiful Code (Leading Programmers Explain How They Think)

Using a similar idea used for Clean Code, this book talks about... Beautiful Code. (PS. When will the Fluffy Code book come out?)

Beautiful code » nvie.com


Quoting (nvie.com):

""The book's concept is simple: each of the 33 chapters is written by a well-respected professional programmer who answers the question: "What is the most beautiful code you've ever seen?" after which they discuss elaborately why they think it's beautiful."


Quoting Amazon.com (this is the link to buy it):

"How do the experts solve difficult problems in software development? In this unique and insightful book, leading computer scientists offer case studies that reveal how they found unusual, carefully designed solutions to high-profile projects. You will be able to look over the shoulder of major coding and design experts to see problems through their eyes. This is not simply another design patterns book, or another software engineering treatise on the right and wrong way to do things. The authors think aloud as they work through their project's architecture, the tradeoffs made in its construction, and when it was important to break rules. Beautiful Code is an opportunity for master coders to tell their story. All author royalties will be donated to Amnesty International."

Management: Amazon and the no-powerpoints meetings

Memo-driven meetings vs. PowerPoint-driven meetings:
https://www.businessinsider.com/bezos-admits-amazon-has-the-weirdest-meeting-culture-2018-4

Quoting:
"During an onstage interview Friday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos explained the strange meetings that Amazon holds.

Each meeting requires a well-crafted, six-page memo that the whole room sits and reads at the start.

Bezos banned PowerPoint years ago, and explained why the memo-driven meeting is far superior."

BOOK: Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation (Jez Humble, David Farley) AKA "The Bible"

AKA the bible for CD:
Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Fowler)): Jez Humble, David Farley: 9780321601919: Amazon.com: Books

Also make sure to read the PPT by Mr. Jez ("Adopting CD"):
https://pt.slideshare.net/InstitutLeanFrance/adopting-continuous-delivery-by-jez-humble


Quoting:
"Getting software released to users is often a painful, risky, and time-consuming process.
This groundbreaking new book sets out the principles and technical practices that enable
rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to users. Through
automation of the build, deployment, and testing process, and improved collaboration between
developers, testers, and operations, delivery teams can get changes released in a matter of hours—
sometimes even minutes–no matter what the size of a project or the complexity of its code base.

Jez Humble and David Farley begin by presenting the foundations of a rapid, reliable, low-risk
delivery process. Next, they introduce the “deployment pipeline,” an automated process for
managing all changes, from check-in to release. Finally, they discuss the “ecosystem” needed to
support continuous delivery, from infrastructure, data and configuration management to governance.

The authors introduce state-of-the-art techniques, including automated infrastructure management
and data migration, and the use of virtualization. For each, they review key issues, identify best
practices, and demonstrate how to mitigate risks. Coverage includes

• Automating all facets of building, integrating, testing, and deploying software
• Implementing deployment pipelines at team and organizational levels
• Improving collaboration between developers, testers, and operations
• Developing features incrementally on large and distributed teams
• Implementing an effective configuration management strategy
• Automating acceptance testing, from analysis to implementation
• Testing capacity and other non-functional requirements
• Implementing continuous deployment and zero-downtime releases
• Managing infrastructure, data, components and dependencies
• Navigating risk management, compliance, and auditing

Whether you’re a developer, systems administrator, tester, or manager, this book will help your
organization move from idea to release faster than ever—so you can deliver value to your business
rapidly and reliably."

BOOK: Agile and safety-critical?

https://www.amazon.com/Agile-Methods-Safety-Critical-Systems-Examples/dp/1717543146
Quoting:
"Product description

This book, packed with real-world insights and direct experiences, is for managers who want the benefits of Agile but also must address regulatory compliance, integration of software with other disciplines, and product safety. In it, we combine our understanding of Agile development, hardware/software integration, and regulatory requirements. We know that Agile is simple but not easy; leadership is crucial to make this change spread. We aim to show how you can navigate the transition."

BOOK: Clean Architecture: A Craftsman's Guide to Software Structure and Design (Robert C. Martin Series): Robert C. Martin: 9780134494166: Amazon.com: Books

Clean Architecture: A Craftsman's Guide to Software Structure and Design (Robert C. Martin Series): Robert C. Martin: 9780134494166: Amazon.com: Books

Quoting:

"Practical Software Architecture Solutions from the Legendary Robert C. Martin (“Uncle Bob”)

By applying universal rules of software architecture, you can dramatically improve developer productivity throughout the life of any software system. Now, building upon the success of his best-selling books Clean Code and The Clean Coder, legendary software craftsman Robert C. Martin (“Uncle Bob”) reveals those rules and helps you apply them.

Martin’s Clean Architecture doesn’t merely present options. Drawing on over a half-century of experience in software environments of every imaginable type, Martin tells you what choices to make and why they are critical to your success. As you’ve come to expect from Uncle Bob, this book is packed with direct, no-nonsense solutions for the real challenges you’ll face—the ones that will make or break your projects.

• Learn what software architects need to achieve—and core disciplines and practices for achieving it
• Master essential software design principles for addressing function, component separation, and data management
• See how programming paradigms impose discipline by restricting what developers can do
• Understand what’s critically important and what’s merely a “detail”
• Implement optimal, high-level structures for web, database, thick-client, console, and embedded applications
• Define appropriate boundaries and layers, and organize components and services
• See why designs and architectures go wrong, and how to prevent (or fix) these failures

Clean Architecture is essential reading for every current or aspiring software architect, systems analyst, system designer, and software manager—and for every programmer who must execute someone else’s designs."

BOOK: Agile Software Development with Scrum (Series in Agile Software Development): Ken Schwaber, Mike Beedle: 9780130676344: Amazon.com: Books

The book that started it all, by Schwaber and Beedle (recently disappeared):

Agile Software Development with Scrum (Series in Agile Software Development): Ken Schwaber, Mike Beedle: 9780130676344: Amazon.com: Books

2017-11: Amazon Alexa gets a new version

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/09/amazon-echo-review-smaller-cheaper-alexa-gadget-new-second-generation

Quoting:
"The new Amazon Echo is cheaper, smaller and has a less imposing stature, but is it still the best smart speaker going?

Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa has improved greatly since the Echo’s introduction to the UK at the end of last year, altered behind the scenes without users needing to do anything thanks the virtue of being a cloud-powered product. It has gained new skills, routines and other smart home control abilities. Its voice recognition and understanding has improved, and it is now a little more conversational, remembering certain topics that you’re talking about the way a human would.

But the outside of the speaker has not changed, until now. The new Amazon Echo for 2017 (find here) is just under 9cm shorter, standing 14.8cm tall and is covered in your choice of fabric, wood or metallic finish, standing in stark contrast to the monolithic black or white towering cylinder of the previous generation."

Details on link. Do read.

"Verdict
The new 2017 Amazon Echo is an absolute bargain at £80. Alexa is still the best voice assistant for smart home control, still hears you better than any other over noise and music, and is still getting better with feature updates and improvements behind the scene.

There are now better-sounding, more expensive smart speakers available such as the £199 Sonos One, and Google Assistant still beats Alexa on general knowledge, but at £80 the Echo undercuts the competition by some margin and sounds pretty good for the money."

Books on Requirements?

For everything in life, there's a book. I even found some book for good friends of mine who ride the bicycle (that went something like "how to not ruin your sex life riding bikes"). Unfortunately a search for it in the Amazon store today does not yield results.

And then, there are good books on writing good requirements.

Some of them are pretty much old but they are still good books on the subject (this is an "old" art):

• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Requirements-Process-Suzanne-Robertson/dp/0201360462/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8
• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Requirements-Process-2nd-second/dp/B008IT2WJW/ref=sr_1_3 (the 2nd Edition)
• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Managing-Software-Requirements-Approach-Technology/dp/0201615932/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8
• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Managing-Software-Requirements-Addison-Wesley-Technology/dp/032112247X/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8
• Writing Better Requirements: Amazon.co.uk: Ian Alexander, Richard Stevens: 9780321131638: Books

PS: Some classical papers on requirements:

• http://homepages.laas.fr/kader/Hooks.pdf

• http://www.win.tue.nl/~wstomv/edu/2ip30/references/smart-requirements.pdf

Additional references (sources for the INTERNAL QMS ENG02 Process) 

The main conceptual references for the process description, back in 2003, were:

Guide to the user requirements definition phase, ESA PSS-05-02 Issue 1 Revision 1 (1995).

Guide to the software requirements definition phase, ESA PSS-05-03 Issue 1 Revision 1 (1995).

Space engineering – Software, ESA ECSS-E-40B Draft 1 (2002)

Some additional references used were:

Managing Software Requirements: a unified approach, Dean Leffingwell, Don Widrig, 2000, Addison-Wesley

Mastering the Requirements Process, Suzanne and James Robertson, 1999, Addison-Wesley

Modelling for requirement engineering, Dr. Eric Conquet, 2002, ESA / ESTEC TOS- EME

Specifying Good Requirements, Donald Firesmith, in Journal of Object Technology, vol. 2, no. 4, July-August 2003, pp. 77-87. http://www.jot.fm/issues/issue_2003_07/column7

@2017-11, additional sources for QMS PCS. 

BOOK: Artificial Intelligence (aka as the Bible)

The Bible on artificial intelligence (AI) is the Russell / Norvig book. It was the book I used during my graduation in AI (back in 1988) and still is THE book:
https://www.amazon.es/gp/aw/d/1292153962/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?__mk_es_ES=%C3%85M%C3%85Z%C3%95%C3%91&qid=1503243842&sr=8-1π=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=artificial+intelligence&dpPl=1&dpID=51ROfnj1yDL&ref=plSrch

Quoting:
"For one or two-semester, undergraduate or graduate-level courses in Artificial Intelligence. The long-anticipated revision of this best-selling text offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date introduction to the theory and practice of artificial intelligence."

Startup: Driving Digital (Book)

A book on using technology to drive business transformation (pre sale):
https://www.amazon.es/Driving-Digital-Business-Transformation-Technology/dp/0814438601

BOOK: Forms that Work - Caroline Jarret | Gerry Gaffney

Designing web pages with usability in mind?
The book "Forms that Work - Designing Web Forms for Usability" by Caroline Jarret and Gerry Gaffney might help.

FFR: https://www.amazon.com/Forms-that-Work-Interactive-Technologies/dp/1558607102

Quoting:
"Forms are everywhere on the web – for registration and communicating, for commerce and government. Good forms make for happier customers, better data, and reduced support costs. Bad forms fill your organization’s databases with inaccuracies and duplicates and can cause loss of potential consumers.

Designing good forms is trickier than people think. Jarrett and Gaffney come to the rescue with Designing Forms that Work, clearly explaining exactly how to design great forms for the web. Liberally illustrated with full-color examples, it guides readers on how to define requirements, how to write questions that users will understand and want to answer, and how to deal with instructions, progress indicators and errors.

• Provides proven and practical advice that will help you avoid pitfalls, and produce forms that are aesthetically pleasing, efficient and cost-effective.
• Features invaluable design methods, tips, and tricks to help ensure accurate data and satisfied customers.
• Includes dozens of examples -- from nitty-gritty details (label alignment, mandatory fields) to visual designs (creating good grids, use of color).
• Foreword by Steve Krug, author of the best selling Don't Make Me Think!"

BOOK: Clean Code | Robert C. Martin

So, another good book on how to write good (clean) code to keep in mind is Robert C. Martin's "Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship":

https://www.amazon.com/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software-Craftsmanship/dp/0132350882

Quoting:
"Even bad code can function. But if code isn’t clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Noted software expert Robert C. Martin presents a revolutionary paradigm with Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship . Martin has teamed up with his colleagues from Object Mentor to distill their best agile practice of cleaning code “on the fly” into a book that will instill within you the values of a software craftsman and make you a better programmer—but only if you work at it.

What kind of work will you be doing? You’ll be reading code—lots of code. And you will be challenged to think about what’s right about that code, and what’s wrong with it. More importantly, you will be challenged to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft.

Clean Code is divided into three parts. The first describes the principles, patterns, and practices of writing clean code. The second part consists of several case studies of increasing complexity. Each case study is an exercise in cleaning up code—of transforming a code base that has some problems into one that is sound and efficient. The third part is the payoff: a single chapter containing a list of heuristics and “smells” gathered while creating the case studies. The result is a knowledge base that describes the way we think when we write, read, and clean code.

Readers will come away from this book understanding
How to tell the difference between good and bad code
How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code
How to create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes
How to format code for maximum readability
How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic
How to unit test and practice test-driven development
This book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst with an interest in producing better code."

Table of Contents 

Clean code

Meaningful names

Functions

Comments

Formatting

Objects and data structures

Error handling

Boundaries

Unit tests

Classes

Systems

Emergence

Concurrency

Successive refinement

JUnit internals

Refactoring serialdate

Smells and heuristics

Appendix A: Concurrency II

Appendix B: Org.jfree.date.serialdate

Appendix C: Cross references of heuristics

Epilogue.