Foundation books (Was: The Mythical Man-Month)

[Stuart Burnfield <slb -at- westnet -dot- com -dot- au>]

Some books don't yield practical tips that you could apply immediately 
to your work, but instead provide a foundation for how you approach work 
for years to come.

I don't know if there's a name for this class of books; in the Subject 
line I've called them 'foundation books'. They're not just good books, 
great books, influential books. They provide the foundation or framework 
for the specific knowledge you acquire and apply elsewhere. As Sarah 
says, they make sense of experiences that you've had but never quite 
been able to put together before.

The Mythical Man-Month is one such book for me. Others are Peopleware, 
by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, and The Design of Everyday Things, by 
Don Norman.

A borderline case is Alan Cooper's book About Face. It does have a lot 
of practical advice, but it also gave me a theoretical basis to explain 
problems I'd experienced in software development projects.

Can anyone else name some foundation books?

Stuart


Sarah Bouchier said:
 > After all the discussion and recommendation of 'The Mythical
 > Man-Month' a couple of weeks back, I got curious, acquired a copy,
 > and have just finished reading it. It blew me away; everything
 > made so much /sense/, and has been totally supported by my
 > experiences in several companies that plainly /hadn't/ read it!
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