I’ve written four books on computer software and most recently wrote a chapter for a fifth. This latest book, Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think, just won the Jolt Award for general books. So now I own a piece of an “Oscar”! The publisher is O’Reilly.
The last book that I wrote completely, The Martian Principles for Successful Enterprise Systems: 20 Lessons Learned from NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Mission is about the principles for developing successful enterprise systems. It’s based on my over 20 years of experience developing enterprise software, and I illustrated it with examples and anecdotes from my work at NASA. John Wiley is the publisher.
My earlier book, Java Number Cruncher: The Java Programmer’s Guide to Numerical Computing is on numerical computing using Java. It uses many graphical and interactive demo programs to illustrate basic concepts of numerical methods. Prentice Hall PTR is the publisher.
I also wrote two books on writing compilers and interpreters. Both books used Pascal as the language to compile and interpret. I wrote the programs of the first one in C, and I used C++ for the second one. I developed the code with an incremental approach. At each step of the way, I had a working program illustrate the concepts. John Wiley also publishes these two books.
By the way, if you want to write a computer book yourself, I strongly recommend getting a literary agent, especially if it’s your first book. Waterside Productions represented me for all four books.
Here’s some information about my books and links to buy them from amazon.com and elsewhere:
![]() | Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think Edited by Andy Oram & Greg Wilson. Chapter 20: “A Highly Reliable Enterprise System for NASA’s Mars Rover Mission”, by Ronald Mak Published in 2007 by O’Reilly, 593 pages. Jolt Award Winner! | ![]() |
![]() | The Martian Principles for Successful Enterprise Systems: 20 Lessons Learned from NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Mission Published in 2006 by John Wiley & Sons, 168 pages. | ![]() |
![]() | Java Number Cruncher: The Java Programmer’s Guide to Numerical Computing Published in 2003 by Prentice Hall PTR, 464 pages. Click for more information and to DOWNLOAD SOURCE FILES | ![]() |
![]() | Java Shu Zhi Fang Fa [Java Numerical Methods] Chinese Translation of Java Number Cruncher Published by the Publishing House of Electronics Industry Beijing, China, 2004 ISBN 7-5053-9309-X/TP | |
![]() | Writing Compilers and Interpreters (3rd edition): A Software Engineering Approach Published in 2009 by John Wiley & Sons, 864 pages. The programs in this book are written in Java. Click forĀ more information and to DOWNLOAD SOURCE FILES | ![]() |
![]() | Writing Compilers and Interpreters: An Applied Approach Using C++ Published in 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, 838 pages. The programs in this book are written in C++, and they operate on Pascal programs. This book is currently in its 7th printing. Click to DOWNLOAD SOURCE FILES (Windows/DOS only) | ![]() |
![]() | Writing Compilers and Interpreters: An Applied Approach Published in 1991 by John Wiley & Sons, 516 pages. The programs in this book are written in C, and they operate on Pascal programs. Click to DOWNLOAD SOURCE FILES | ![]() |