I was commissioned a job that comes out a bit from the patterns of my job (programmer). I was asked to create a book for a famous interior design company. I first accepted, because it is simply a question of composing a book with illustrative images and simple captions. The question is: which software do you recommend for layout or in any case for realization?
ps. on the stack I joined recently so I apologize in advance if this question can be off-topic.
I would highly recommend InDesign as your layout software, and Photoshop and Illustrator as the tools to create and edit assets that will appear in that layout. That said, if you're coming into layout design cold from programming, please understand that knowing which software to use is only one small step. It's like being told what the best programming language would be for a specific application. Now you have the formidable task of learning that language (graphic design) and how to effectively use it's methods to build a cohesive, efficient, and effective solution for your client. That goes for coding as well as design. I wish you much success.
I'm not aware of the design field, but in the scientific community, we produce PDF documents (with good layout and formatting) by coding into typesetting tools like Latex and RMarkdown.
If all you have is images and captions, I believe this should work for you, albeit there might be simpler tools for the graphic design field that I'm not aware of.
:)