Blog entries from September, 2003

For the past two years I have been working as a software developer at Monash University in the Flexible Learning and Teching Program whose main responsibility is the ongoing development and maintenance of the staff and student portal. Part time during my final year of my Computer Science degree (2002) and basically full time since then.

A lot of changes have happened during this time and as a team we are still trying to develop a robust and workable software development cycle. Some other members of the team and I have been trying to push this process forward, basically to make our own lives easier.

Over the past few months I have been reading a variety of materials that talk about different software engineering concepts and practices. Significantly:

• The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
  (Still relevant over 25 years since it was written)

I’ve also been reading Extreme Programming Explained plus a variety of sites (google is your friend), one I was put onto recently being Joel on Software.

So far it seems that most of the writings on software engineering are really just expressing old ideas (largely common sense) in a different way.

Other books that it has been recommended to read:

• Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
• Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams

As a place to keep track of my thoughts I have joined the great unwashed and started my own blog.

At the moment I expect most of the comments to be about my computers, both current and my collection, and software development processes…