Books worth reading

2013-02-05

Joel on Software by Joel Spolsky

Incredibly relevant, hilarious, and snarky Joel Spolsky - you love him or you hate him, but you know he's right. His writing may be a little unorthodox, but his anecdotes about the software industry are chock full of practical wisdom. This book is fun to read and it will make you think.

The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas

Well written, concise and easy to read This book provides excellent advice in a down to earth way. It doesn't lord its insight over you, but it will change the way you program, and you won't necessarily notice that it was responsible for changing the way you program.

Head First Design Patterns by Eric & Elisabeth Freeman

Delightfully quirky and effective, albeit a little... childish... in a good way If you are, like myself, among the uninitiated when it comes to software engineering, this book is a great way to dive into design patterns. Instead of blindly making things up as I go, I now tend to prototype my designs on paper using pseudo-code and this book as a guide.

The C Programming Language by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie

Not what most people would consider pleasure reading... but I am not most people. Still a classic and the ultimate (in my opinion) authority on ANSI C. Every programmer should read this book. It's also a great way to get to sleep really quickly. Great "night stand" reading...