I find works of both Tom DeMarco, and Jerry Weinberg, to be very delightful and refreshing, re software.

Amidst all the jargon, noise, and bullsh*tting, these are two voices of common sense. These are 2 voices which encourage you to think. The termite-hill /ant-farm that is modern IT, or even software-engineering ( a name given to allow you to be paid more) , regularly encourages you not to. 

Big fan of the book "Slack", by the former. The creators of the modern-day-app of the same name probably didn't read the book, when creating an anti-thesis with the same name.

from the book - 

"Twentieth century psychological theory holds that man's character is dominated by a small number of basic instincts: survival, self-esteem, reproduction, territory, and so forth. These are built directly into the brain's firmware. You can consider these instincts intellectually without great passion (that's what you're doing now), but when you feel them, there is always passion involved Even the slightest challenge to one of these built-in values can be upsetting."

Halloween day is the right day to be reading Peopleware. To brings to mind in how many ways things can go wrong,  and did go wrong, that in spite of all this knowledge sitting there, the path of destiny has dragged me through each mistake one by one

of course, the Alan Kay is the root of the tree of which these guys are branches (and leaves)