In my opinion, it's as much a "recommended read" as a lot of other so-called "classics": - Rapid Application Development (also by McConnell) - Soul of a New M

In my opinion, it's as much a "recommended read" as a lot of other so-called "classics": - Rapid Application Development (also by McConnell) - Soul of a New Machine by Kidder - Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks - Programming Pearls by John Bentley - Applied Cryptography (2e) by Bruce Schneier - The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stohl - Structured Computer Organization by Tanenbaum & Todd - Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Gamma, Helm, etc - A New Kind of Science by Wolfram And many more could be added to this list Sure, some of them use acronyms or reference technology that you've either never heard of or has been supplanted But you could [nearly] do a find-and-replace on those "outdated" terms with a "current" term, and the books would [effectively] be up-to-date Don't get hung-up on specific examples - they're just there to illustrate the problem domain