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Way back in the early nineties, when I was in college, I went to go visit my friend at his school. He had class, so I went to the library to kill a few hours. I dug through the (rather ancient) CS section, and pulled some books to read. Two have stuck with me:

One was __The Mythical Man-Month__ (the old one, not any of the reissues). That put into words so many things that I felt about computer programming, if nothing else the humanness of programming as a pursuit.

The second was __Software Tools__. Even then, whichever version I encountered was ancient (I was learning C in school). It didn't impact me quite as much as TMMM (which I think i read most of in the library), but it was enough for me to remember and pick up a used copy a few years back.

I still haven't read it, so I'm glad you reminded me about it.

As far as a modern book, the one that seems closest to me is __The Practice of Programming__.




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