Technical Readings

Here you find a list of interesting technical books, articles, papers and other publications I have read about computer and information science, with a short comment and description.

Index:

Chronological history of interesting readings:

2002

June 2002

  • Security & Privacy
    Building     Confidence in a Networked World
    Supplement to IEEE Computer
    A good survey on Internet and computer security and privacy issues

May 2002

  • Modern C++ Design,
    Generic Programming and Design Patterns Applied
    Andrei Alexandrescu
    2001, Addison Wesley Pub Co; ISBN: 0201704315
    A very good book with advanced C++ techniques.

January 2002

  • The www.objectmentor.com page contains a lot of really very good papers on OO analysis and design from R.C.Martin. For example:

 

Design Patterns and Design Principle

 

UML Tutorial:

   Class Diagrams

   Collaboration Diagrams

   Sequence Diagrams

   Finite State Machines

 

Button, whose got the button?

 

They are really worth reading!

2001

November 2001

 

October 2001

  • A.Cockburn
    The Methodology Space
    Humans and Technology tech. rep. HaT TR.97.03, 1997
  • M.M.Lee
    Object-Oriented Analysis in the Real World
    http://www.projtech.com
  • S.J.Mellor
    Building     and using a work breakdown structure
    http://www.projtech.com
  • S.J.Mellor
    The Case for Using Use Cases
    http://www.projtech.com
  • S,Shaler, D.Grand, S.J.Mellor
    The Project Matrix: a Model for SW Engineering Project Management
    http://www.projtech.com

June 2001

  • B.Meyer – Software Engineering in Academy
    IEEE Computer, May 2001

April 2001

  • S.Chen – The Paradox of Digital Preservation
    IEEE Computer, March 2001

February 2001

  • E.Henry, E.Lycklama - How do you plug Java memory leaks?
    Dr.Dobb's Journal, February 2000
  • J.Amsterdam - Java References
    Dr.Dobb's Journal, February 2000

2000

September 200

  • F.Shull, I.Rus, V.Basili – How Perspective-Based Reading can Improve Requirements Inspection
    IEEE Computer, July 2000

August 200

  • Real-Time Distributed Object Computing: An Emerging Field
    IEEE Computer Special Issue, June 2000
    G.Bollella - The Real-Time Specification for Java
    D.C.Schmidt, F.Kuhns - An Overview of the Real-Time CORBA Spec.
    B.Selic - A Generic Framework for Modeling Resources with UML
    K.H.Kim - APIs for Real-Time Distributed Object Programming

June 2000

  • How to be a STAR engineer
    R.E.Kelley
    Spectrum October 1999
    A very nice paper on how engineer should behave to give maximum productuvity.
    The paper cites two books of the same author, that I have ordered and I will read in the next months.
    Look at the author's home page for more details on this very interesting work:
    http://www.kellyideas.com/

1999

October 1999

  • UML in Action
    G.Booch, Guest Editor
    Communication of the ACM, October 1999
    • UML 2001: A Standardisation Odyssey
      C.Kobryn
    • Using Patterns in the UML
      G.Larsen
    • Turning Clockwise: Using UML in the Real-Time Domain
      B.Selic
    • UMLoquent: Expression of AWACS Software Design
      A.E.Bell R.W.Schmidt
    • Modeling Web Application Architectures with UML
      J.Conallen
  • What Netscape Learned from Cross-Platform Software Development
    M.A.Cusumano D.B.Yoffie
    Communication of the ACM, October 1999
    Its develpment strategy produced unexpected costs, a wrong turn with Java, performance compromises, and questions about future ties to Sun Microsystems.
  • Comparing Java vs. C/C++. Efficiency Differences to Interpersonal Differences
    L.Prechelt
    Communication of the ACM, October 1999

September 1999

  • A Career Management Model
    K.Sandholtz
    Dr.Dobb's Journal Fall 1998
  • Surviving the Technical Interview
    J.Saturia
    Dr.Dobb's Journal Fall 1998
  • Becoming a COmputer COnsultant
    J.Ruhl
    Dr.Dobb's Journal Fall 1998

A set of very interesting papers on carres management. Prticularly useful for people in the IT area, but not only.

May 1999

  • Windows CE movesfrom Pocket to Control
    G.A.Mintchell
    Control Engineering, May 1999
  • Is a new Control Room in Your Future?
    D.Harrold, I.Nimmo
    Control Engineering, May 1999

April 1999

  • Inspections - Some Surprising Findings
    R.L.Glass
    Communications of the ACM, April 1999
    An interesting analysis of code inspection for bug finding and code quality control
  • Lessons from Open-Source Software Development
    T.O'Reilly
    Communications of the ACM, April 1999
    A group of papers on advantages and disadvantages of Open Software, like Linux, from the best names in the arena of open software development

January 1999

  • What's New in Standard C++
    C.Allison
    C/C++ User Journal, Dec. 1998
  • A CORBA Bean Framework
    D.Houlding
    Dr.Dobb's Journal, Nov. 1998

1998

December 1998

This month has been dedicated to the study of UML (in particular to Use Cases for the requirements of the Auxiliary Telescopes Control Software) and of Java. I have then studied some books in the two areas.

November 1998

  • Computer security and the Internet Scientific American, October 1998
    The need to safeguard computer systems and the information they hold has never been greater. These experts describe the tools that hackers and system administrators use in their duel of wits, then turn to the encryption systems that hield private data from prying eyes.
  • Europe Report
    IEEE Spectrum, October 1998
    The October 1998 issue of IEEE Spectrum publishes and interesting "Europe Report" on the effect of single currency and common market industry and research. problem with 2 nice articles. A very interesting aspect to notice is the relevance of embedded systems for the problem: car board computers, VCRs and many other systems we do think about as computers!!!

September and October 1998

During these months I spent most of my available time reading UML books. It has been a very interesting period and I have found many good books, and in the next months I will continue with these readings and I will start working on new projects applying UML.

August 1998

  • The Java Factor Communicatons of the ACM, June 1998
    This issue of Communications of the ACM contains a special section dedicated to the Java programming language. In particular there are couple of general papers pointing out the good and bad of Java and a couple of interesting papers on the usage of Java in specific application fields. The following are the most interesting:
    • The Java Factor
      S.Singhal, B.Nguyen
    • Why are we using Java again?
      P.Tyma
    • Adding Real-Time capabilities to Java
      K.Nilsen
      A proposal for a real-time extension of the Java language. Tha author claims that minor additions to the standard Java libraries and small extensions to the language itself make it possible the implementation of real-time applications.
    • The Virtual Reality Modeling Language and Java
      D.Brutzman
      A part from the description of how VRML can be interfaced to Java applications, this paper is a very effective introduction to the basic concepts behind VRML.
  • What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic
    D.Goldberg
    ACM Computing Surveys, Vol.23, No.1, March 1991
    A very interesting and thick (48 pages) paper about implementation, cavets and problems with floating-point arithmetic. This paper presents a tutorial on the aspects of floating-point that have a direct impact on designers of computer systems. It begins with background on floating-point representation and rounding error, continues with a discussion of the IEEE floating-point standard and concludes with examples of how computer system builders can better support floating-point.
  • Introduction to CORBA Distributed Objects
    R.Resendes M.Laukien
    Dr.Dobb's Journal, Apr. '98
    A short but clear introduction to the basic concept behind the CORBA architecture
  • Testing Error Handlers by Simulating Errors
    D.Pomerants
    C/C++ User Journal, June '98
    A very nice approach for testing error handling code. The proposed set of tools allows to easily and automatically generate error conditions for all implemented error handling code sections.
    I will do something on this lines in my next project!!!

July 1998

  • The June 1998 issue of IEEE Spectrum focuses on Year 2000 problem with 2 nice articles. A very interesting aspect to notice is the relevance of embedded systems for the problem: car board computers, VCRs and many other systems we do think about as computers!!!
    • Brooding on the Year 2000
      R.Comerford T.S.Perry
      IEEE Spectrum, June '98
    • Making embedded systems Year 2000 compliant
      D.Lefkon B.Payne
      IEEE Spectrum, June '98

June 1998

  • Agents on the Move
    P.Morreale
    IEEE Spectrum, Apr. '98
    A simple and clear introduction to the basic ideas behind "agent" software, i.e. to software that perform tasks by traveling around networks of dissimilar computers. An interesting entry point is The Agent Society.
  • Field emission displays
    In this month a number of articles appeared about new flat display technologies, like Field Emission (FED) and Plasma Displays. Among these:
    • FED up with FAT tubes
      B.R.Chalamala B.E.Gnade
      IEEE Spectrum, Apr. '98
    • Television's bright new technology
      A.Sobel
      Scientific American, May '98
  • What practices are being adopted on the Web?
    V.Turau
    IEEE Computer, May '98
    A report on a research project with the aim to investigate the discrepancy between commercial and academic Web design, with some very interesting statistics about the actual usage of Web technologies like Java, forms or image maps.

May 1998

During this month I have been in Chile at the Paranal observatory, so I found a lot of time to read books, magazines and papers that were waiting since many monthes. Among these I found particularly interesting the following:

  • Thread Synchronization with Reference-Counting Handles
    B.Reck
    C/C++ User Journal, Feb. '98
    An interesting technique to provide thread-safe access to representation objects.
  • M.L.Manns H.Sharp M.Prieto P.McLaughlin
    Capturing Successful Practices in OT Education and Training
    JOOP Mar./Apr. '98
    Contributions from academic and industry educators are analyzed in pattern format to document proven teaching strategies.
    Very interesting!
    Look at the Pedagogical Patterns Home Page.
  • N.F.Johnson S.Jajodia
    Exploring Steganography: Seeing The Unseen
    IEEE Computer, Feb. 1998
    Steganography in an ancient art of hiding information. Digital technology gives us new ways to apply steganographic techniques, including one of the most intriguing - that of hiding information in digital images.

January 1998

  • Break throughs: Technology 1998
    Analysis & Forecast Issue Editors: L.Geppert W.Sweet
    IEEE Spectrum, Jan. '98
    Really a great issue!!! A rich set of papers, one per each major engineering field, that make the point on the current status and on the foreseen and foreseable break throughs for 1998.

1997

September 1997

  • The Proposed C++ Standard: Evolution, Revolution, Innovation, Invention, convolution
    Dr.Dobb's Journal, Sep. '97
    A.Stevens
    A scaring paper on the status of C++ ANSI/ISO standardisation. For what one can read here discussions are going on wildly and one cannot really see things converging. More over no compiler provider is able now to put on the market a complete implementation of the standard, and some things seem really difficult to implement or to introduce important backward incompatibilities with the past (both C and C++).

July 1997

  • The Quality Approach: is it delivering?
    Communications of the ACM, Jun '97
    An interesting special report on software quality and on the application of the Capability Maturity Model. It includes also a paper describing a study on how software development is carried out at Microsoft, using a mixed approach implementing techniques imported from the "hacker" mindset, but that seems to work in order to have a faster and more dynamic development cycle.

June 1997

  • Sharing Virtual Worlds, special report
    IEEE Spectrum, March 1997.
    A very interesting special report on the state of the art in virtual worlds, and virtual reality. Of particular interest are two papers:
    • An infrastructure for social software
      R.Roskwell
      This paper describes in a very effective way, based on a sample-story, what is necessary to create virtual worlds with interacting entities in common platform customized for social interaction.
    • Syntetic soldiers
      C.R.Karr D.Reece E.Franceschino
      This paper describes the state of the art in military trainees, where soldiers can fight virtual battles against software foes without even knowing who's real and who isn't.

May 1997

  • The battle for the desktop
    R.Comerford, Senior Editor
    IEEE Spectrum, May 1997.
    To understand the what and why of the big battle between the Network Personal Computer (NetPC) and the Network Computer (NC).
    I am still a convinced supporter of the NetPC (why should I depend on a word processor coming from the network? Wasn't this a good reason to leave the mainframe schema?), but now I understand much better the reasons of the supporters of the NC, and with some of them I agree.
  • Communications of the ACM, April 1997.
    This issue contains a very interesting set of articles about debugging techniques and what are the new trends in debugging tools.
    It is worth a look, reading at least the first few articles.

April 1997

  • Big Blue
    B.Morris
    Fortune     April 14, 1997
    This is a nice (althought a bit too long) article on Lou Gestner, the CEO of IBM. It talks of his career and of the way he is managing IBM and its restoring its old glory.
  • Scientific American, March 1997.
    This issue contains a very interesting Special Report:
    • The Internet: Fulfilling the promise.

February 1997

  • Intel MMX for Multimedia PCs
    A.Peleg S.Wilkie U.Weiser
    Communications of the ACM, January 1997.
    A very good introduction to the MMX architecture, from Intel people working in the MMX development team

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Last modified: Tue May 8 17:14:11 METDST 2001