The best book on the subject

For all geeks, Software Engineering seems like a punishment. Its a boring, non technical, too managerial subject that really is nothing much more than common sense. Atleast that's what all hardcore coders believe. But this book changes all that. Yes, its actually fun to read.

The first thing you notice about the book when you turn to its table of contents is that it is split into five parts and a lot of chapters. This ensures, that no chapter is too long or boring to read. The presentation of the book is excellent. The sidebars contain useful key-points and references, which is the real fun part of the book. Adding to the party is funny quotes and practical advice on the practice of software engineering.

The cream of the book lies in the third and fourth parts. The third part specifies the traditional methods of software engineering like Quality Assurance and Software Configuration Management. The content is really quite good here, and the presentation is, as usual, excellent.

The fourth part deals with the Object Oriented part of software engineering. This part is really what is required to understand the concepts which make the foundation of the Unified Modelling Language (UML). The fifth part deals with advanced concepts like web reengineering.

All in all, its a great book to read and to really grasp the finer points of the subject from ground up. And the practical advice on real world situations make it almost perfect. After all, the book has been a best-seller for two decades now, can't be that bad.