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Reviewer: Noah S. Prywes

Jackson has enormous experience in consulting and in training programmers and software designers. He is the father of the Jackson Structured Programming and Jackson Structured Design methods, which are better known in Europe than in the United States. This book is a collection of “wise man” short entries ordered alphabetically; Jackson calls them “a lexicon.” They include a wide range of comments on software, from general sociological impact to detailed implementation techniques, with material on the use of formal methods and different programming paradigms scattered throughout. Although Jackson provides guidelines for perusing the book, it is probably equally good to browse through it randomly. It contains a selected bibliography and index. This book is eminently readable. There is an underlying sense of humor to it that, while it may appeal to some more than others, makes the book fun to read.