¶ Formal studies

• Harvard Extension School — Undergraduate courses of Mathematics and Educational Technologies.

• Unviersità degli Studi di Firenze — I attended only one term of Software Engineering (computer Science exam 30/30 cum laude). In 1995, I dropped out to work for a startup in the emerging field of enterprise networking.

• Istituto Tecnico-Commerciale Alessandro Volta — High-school diploma in Mathematics and Computer Science with a rating of 56 out of 60. This course included a good amount of Electronic Engineering.

¶ Non-formal studies and self-teaching

To compensate for the lack of good formal education, I became a good customer of the local libraries:

• Compilers, reading plenty of textbooks such as CompilersPrinciplesTechniquesAndTools, and many others.

• Algorithms — many, including classics such as DonaldKnuth's bible TheArtOfComputerProgramming, CambridgeUniversityPress's NumericalRecipes and NicholasWirth's ancient, but still brilliant, "Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs".

• Operating Systems — Too many to mention here, most of which quite theoretical and boring. Of course, my favorite will always be AdvancedProgrammingInTheUnixEnvironment.

• Networking — Several books, including TcpIpIllustrated, several RFCs and technical papers.

• Programming Languages — All the obvious textbooks such as BjarneStroustrup's SeePlusPlusProgrammingLanguage, and many others like the old SeeProgrammingLanguage, ThinkingInJava, and dozens of C++ books.

• Programming Techniques — Countless. Such as SeePlusPlusTemplateMetaprogramming and the controversial ModernSeePlusPlusDesign by AndreiAlexandrescu. My absolute favourite is Brian Kernighan's and Rob Pike's The Practice of Programming.

• Software Architecture and Design — All the "must-read" classics such as GangOfFour's DesignPatterns, UmlDistilled and UmlDesignPatterns.

• Project Management — My favourites are TheMythicalManMonth and AntiPatterns, but I've also read WaltzingWithBears, ExecutionPlainAndSimple and a few others.

• Technical Writing — TheElementsOfStyle and DonaldKnuth's TheTexBook are my favourites on the topics of stylish writing and typesetting.

• Numerical Methods — I'm sorry to have quite a thin mathematical background. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading DonaldKnuth's ConcreteMathematics and CambridgeUniversityPress' NumericalRecipes.

• Database — Relational algebra, principles of schema normalization, SQL.