Software project retrospectives identify "what worked" and, not infrequently, what didn't; they distill the invaluable lessons garnered from weeks or months of hard work and tribulations into useful guidance. Reliable Source: Lessons from a Life in Software Engineering provides a retrospective, not of a single project or subproject, but on an entire career in the software industry. The book conveys solutions to the eclectic problems you'll encounter as a software professional. You'll learn how to:

Improve your technical writing skills

Prepare and give succinct, impactful technical presentations

Teach and mentor

Employ estimates and analytic confidence measures

Find reliable sources of information

Conduct retrospectives

Perform code inspections

Perform case studies

Use checklists

Employ the Delphi Method

Employ pre-, post- and invariant conditions to improve software reliability

Write defensive code

Perform root cause analyses

Tackle the most difficult types of software defects

Guard against floating point errors

Identify future career paths (including fields accelerated by the pandemic)

The book is divided into 8 parts whose chapters are largely self-contained, though a few are best read in order. Your journey begins with an examination of a mysterious ancient coin and its prescient revelations about information systems.

In Part I, you'll look at Software Engineering afresh while learning about Agile processes, Pareto charts, Fagan Inspections, the Personal Software Process, Checklists, evaluative research, Brooks's Law, Pair Debugging and Case Studies.

Part II focuses on writing. You'll learn the tried-and-true methods of a famous computer magazine columnist and science fiction writer, and a famous computer magazine editor.

Part III centers on presentation skills, including teaching and mentoring skills. You'll also learn about estimates and analytic confidence and their importance when briefing senior leadership.

Part IV covers software reliability. You'll learn about defensive programming techniques as well different categories of defects including Heisenbugs, Laplace Bugs and Occult Defects. You'll also gain an understanding of Root Cause Analysis. Finally, you'll explore large-scale high-reliability systems.

Part V concerns debugging memory and synchronization errors. You'll encounter "Monsters from the Id" and learn the techniques of a certain consulting detective, including how to apply these techniques to ridding modern software systems of their evil denizens.

Part VI covers one of the most difficult but essential features of modern programming languages - floating point numbers.

Part VII focuses on identifying reliable sources of information - on technical trends and the future of the industry. You'll also learn about mind maps, recommender systems, tools for note taking, and self-curated magazines.

Part VIII explores the new world of remote work and the impact of the pandemic on software engineering.

Part IX concludes your journey.

Along the way, you'll encounter interesting software engineering personalities, homicidal computers, ancient gods and an extra-solar interloper. You'll match wits with the world's greatest (fictional) detective and discover how top engineers determine the root cause of the most catastrophic software failures. You'll absorb a lifetime of experience without all the fuss.