The COBOL companion Book

Never has a book made the term 'dead tree' seem as true as this one. With minimal work, almost all of the content in this is freely available online, and I would highly recommend reading the introductions on paper, but viewing the pieces themselves in their original hyperlinked state. Cut off from their comments, with references reduced to footnotes rather than links, the writing shrinks. It feels much more alive in the context it was written.

That said, it is a fair collection of diverse and important technological writing. It feels like a good introduction to the online developer community. Someone who has been keeping up with software blogs for any time will already be familiar with some of the material - but that's how a best of collection should be.

at five years, the collection is already showing it's age. It was collected in a pre-iPhone, pre-facebook age. In some ways, this is a little funny, since you know the answers to many of the big questions being discussed. In other ways, it is a valuable snapshot of 2005 - giving perspective on just how fast things are changing in this world.