Reading

Essential Reading

The following is a list of books that have benefitted me as a professional developer. I don’t claim to have read every word in these books, but rather that each of them has been beneficial.

Language Specific Books

Principles stand the test of time and apply to a multitude of situations. For this reason, I avoid books that are technology specific, preferring instead books that espouse principles and general techniques.
Nevertheless, there are times when you need to get down to the nitty-gritty. The following books have helped me to do so:

• C# in Depth (Jon Skeet)
  
• VB.Net Language in a Nutshell (Steven Roman, Ron Petrusha and Paul Lomax)
  
• Professional SQL Server 2000 Programming (Robert Vieira)
• Javascript: The Good Parts (Douglas Crockford)

General Coding

• Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction (Steve C. McConnell)
• Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Robert C. Martin)

Design and Patterns

• Head First Design Patterns (Eric Freeman et al)
• Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Gamma et al)
• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (Martin Fowler)
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (Martin Fowler)

Agile Development

• Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules (Steve C. McConnell)
• Practices of an Agile Developer (Venkat Subramaniam and Andy Hunt)
• Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit (Mary and Tom Poppendieck)

Usability

• Don’t Make Me Think (Steve Krug)
• The Design of Everyday Things (Donald Norman)

Other Programming Books

• Coders at Work (Peter Seibel)
• Getting Real (37 Signals)
• The Mythical Man Month and Other Essays on Software Engineering (Fred Brooks)

Non-Programming Books

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen R. Covey)
• First Things First (Stephen R. Covey and A. Roger Merrill)
• Getting Things Done: How to Achieve Stress-free Productivity (David Allen)
• How to Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie)
  
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Douglas Hofstadter)
• Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman (Ralph Leighton, Richard P. Feynman and Edward Hutchings)

Recommendations

The following books were recommended by StackOverflow readers, but I am yet to read them:

• The Pragmatic Programmer
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
• The C Programming Language (Kernighan and Ritchie)
• Introduction to Algorithms (Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest & Stein)
• The Art of Computer (Programming by Donald Knuth)
• Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools (Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi and Jeffrey D. Ullman)
• Effective C++
• More Effective C++
• CODE (Charles Petzold)
• Programming Pearls (Jon Bentley)
• Working Effectively with Legacy Code (Michael C. Feathers)
• Peopleware (Demarco and Lister)
• Effective Java 2nd Edition
• The Little Schemer
• The Seasoned Schemer
• Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby
• The Inmates Are Running The Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
• The Art of Unix Programming
• Test-Driven Development: By Example (Kent Beck)
• Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices (Robert C. Martin)
• Domain Driven Designs (Eric Evans)
• Modern C++ Design (Andrei Alexandrescu)
• Best Software Writing I (Joel Spolsky)
• The Practice of Programming (Kernighan and Pike)
• Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware (Andy Hunt)
• Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art (Steve McConnel)
• The Passionate Programmer (My Job Went To India) (Chad Fowler)
• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
• Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs
• Writing Solid Code
• Foundations of Programming (Karl Seguin)
• Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice in C (2nd Edition)
• Thinking in Java (Bruce Eckel)
• The Elements of Computing Systems
• Refactoring to Patterns (Joshua Kerievsky)
• Modern Operating Systems (Andrew S. Tanenbaum)
• The Annotated Turing
• Things That Make Us Smart (Donald Norman)
• The Timeless Way of Building (Christopher Alexander)
• The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management (Tom DeMarco)
• The C++ Programming Language (3rd edition) (Stroustrup)
• Computer Systems – A Programmer’s Perspective
• Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C# (Robert C. Martin)
• Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests
• Framework Design Guidelines (Brad Abrams)
• Object Thinking (Dr. David West)
• Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment (W. Richard Stevens)
• Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
• The Soul of a New Machine (Tracy Kidder)
• CLR via C# (Jeffrey Richter)
• Design Patterns in C# (Steve Metsker)
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert M. Pirsig)
• About Face – The Essentials of Interaction Design
• Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (Clay Shirky)
• The Tao of Programming
• Computational Beauty of Nature
• Writing Solid Code (Steve Maguire)
• Philip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing
• Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications (Grady Booch)
• Effective Java (Joshua Bloch)
• Computability (N. J. Cutland)
• Masterminds of Programming
• The Tao Te Ching
• The Productive Programmer
• The Art of Deception (Kevin Mitnick)
• The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World (Christopher Duncan)
• Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case studies in Common Lisp
• Masters of Doom
• Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# with NUnit (Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas with Matt Hargett)
• How To Solve It (George Polya)
• The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
• Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation
• Writing Secure Code (2nd Edition) by Michael Howard
• Introduction to Functional Programming (Philip Wadler and Richard Bird)
• No Bugs! (David Thielen)
• Rework (Jason Freid and DHH)
• JUnit in Action