Great Software Debates (Software Engineering "Best Practices")

Rating:
Summary: Rehash of Essays from IEEE Software
Review: This not a bad book, but if you happen to read IEEE Software regularly, there is almost nothing new. I have not yet read the whole book, and Davis claims that he has updated the original articles, but most of the stuff has not changed.

On the other hand, if you have not read the articles before, they are quite fun to read, e.g. "Art or Engineering, One More Time".

But I have an issue with the title: the "debates" are mostly some paragraphs at the end of the article, that are more like questions in a text book that might start a debate, but do not really dig into a controversial issue.

I very much prefer, Robert E. Glass': "Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering", which contains similiar topics, but is much more to the point. And makes the controversies on his issues much more explicit.

Funnily, Glass, on the other hand, thinks very highly of an older book of Davis': "201 Principles of Software Development"