People One Can Learn From

Some of the people that have influenced the way I think:

Joel Spolsky: Joel was a project manager for Microsoft Excel. He has his own software shop now, but still publishes extremely smart articles on software development.

Philip Greenspun: Philip is an experienced guy who knows a lot about web publishing, and about database-backed websites. His website contains an abundance of texts he wrote. As soon as you get there, go to the site map.

Steve McConnell: Steve is the author of the most excellent books Code Complete and Rapid Development. Besides running his custom software development firm Construx, he is also the editor of IEEE Software. The best part of his website are probably his articles.

Nathan Myers: Nathan is a C++ wizard. He was on the standardization committee and is the author of the Chapter 22, Localization, and the explicit keyword. You can find some of his articles in the C++ section of his website, including C++ in the Real World: Advice from the Trenches.

Robert C. Martin: Previous editor of the C++ Report. Teaches good object-oriented design and doesn't sell you any bullshit, unlike Grady Booch. If you want to do good object-oriented design, read the following articles from his website:; 1. The Open Closed Principle; 2. The Liskov Substitution Principle; 3. The Dependency Inversion Principle; 4. The Interface Segregation Principle; 5. Granularity; 6. Stability

Jakob Nielsen: Jakob is an expert on web usability that companies like the New York Times hire to tell them how to improve their websites. He also publishes a bi-weekly Alertbox column.

Bruce Tognazzini: Tog is the founder of Apple's Human Interface Group. He now publishes an Ask Tog column with good info on UI design. Be sure to read about the Fitt's Law.

A Bunch of Smart People: Unfortunately, much of the extremely smart info on general software development and C++ cannot be found on the web at all. It has been published inside Usenet discussions on C++, in the comp.lang.c++.moderated newsgroup. The best way to fish that information out is to go to deja.com and search this newsgroup for posts by Nathan Myers, Pete Becker, Bjarne Stroustrup, Andrew Koenig and especially Dave Abrahams, an extremely clear thinker on exceptions.