On the other hand it is different for collecting interesting and influential papers and essays. You read them in an afternoon and ponder over them for quite a while! Then you revisit them way, maybe years, later again.
But yes, you don‘t need more than one good introductory book on architecture, most of the books listed don’t have anything to do with architecture anyways, but rather software culture.
Maybe you don’t need to read one at all, but rather a paper from someone who analyzed or created a piece of software with interesting and useful architecture.
One afternoon? Hm, it depends on the paper really and how close it is to your daily work.
2 pages in FoundationDB paper (https://www.foundationdb.org/files/fdb-paper.pdf) I knew I was looking at one month's reading material if I really was to grasp everything. It'd be much easier if I worked with DBs and Distributed daily but I don't.
Totally agree about papers and essays and revisiting them years later. I built a website based directly on that idea. https://whitelist.sh. It’s almost finished. Just need to reorder some items in the list.
That looks pretty cool! But I meant papers and essays from the likes of Edsger Dijsktra, Gerald Sussman, Alan Kay, Joe Armstrong, Daniel Ingalls, Peter Naur, Tony Hoare, Niklaus Wirth, Betrand Meyer, John McCarthy... and many, many others[0], including ones that are not necessarily as known but have discovered deep and useful insights into programming and computers.
Blog articles are really useful too, especially if they concentrate on say something more specifically practical that doesn't warrant the same polish and rigor of a paper or essay. Also something I noticed is that many, who will make more general assertions in these articles, are typically echoing something that has been written down by researchers quite a while ago, so why not go to the source?
[0] Apparently I can't stop writing down names because it feels like I'm leaving out too many...
> But I meant papers and essays from the likes of ...
Oh they're all in there! They're just put at the back end of the 4 years partly because the more advanced content goes towards the end and partly because I haven't distributed everything properly.
I've spent quite a few hours curating the ~800 items and have in that process learnt a few new names that you mentioned, such as Niklaus Wirth. From him, the list has "Good Ideas, Through The Looking Glass".
I don't recognize Daniel Ingalls and Peter Naur so I'll look into them and consider adding them to the list. Cheers :)
Edit: Oh, Peter Naur would be the Naur in Backus-Naur form. He'd be in there.
But yes, you don‘t need more than one good introductory book on architecture, most of the books listed don’t have anything to do with architecture anyways, but rather software culture.
Maybe you don’t need to read one at all, but rather a paper from someone who analyzed or created a piece of software with interesting and useful architecture.