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Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

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Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#31

Post by poulsbohemian »

busterarm wrote: post #9

I've read most of the recommended books, but as far as what I think has delivered immediate real value, I'm going to go with: 1) Clean Code 2) The Phoenix Project 3) UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook I'm sure #2 will be something folks want to fight over shrug . If you want to sidestep years of headache it's a must-read though.

FWIW, "The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement" by Eli Goldratt, almost certainly was the inspiration for The Phoenix Project, and is IMHO a better read. One could follow up with any of Goldratt's other books for more information about the Theory of Constraints.

Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#33

Post by busterarm »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #31
busterarm wrote: post #9

I've read most of the recommended books, but as far as what I think has delivered immediate real value, I'm going to go with: 1) Clean Code 2) The Phoenix Project 3) UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook I'm sure #2 will be something folks want to fight over shrug . If you want to sidestep years of headache it's a must-read though.

FWIW, "The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement" by Eli Goldratt, almost certainly was the inspiration for The Phoenix Project, and is IMHO a better read. One could follow up with any of Goldratt's other books for more information about the Theory of Constraints.

In a sense, I agree with you, but TPP is specific to a software organization and I find it "translates" better, especially to the inexperienced.

Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#34

Post by wilsonnb »

Our field is so varied that there is no good answer to this question unless you specify what you want to focus on.

Some people are inevitably going to recommend The Art of Computer Programming, which hardly anyone has read and isn't that relevant to the work that 99% of us are doing.

Someone will probably recommend The C Programming Language, also called K&R after the authors, but again it's not very useful unless you're going to be using a lot of C and even then I personally don't think it provides anything you can't get from guides on the internet. (I have actually read this one, but it's been a while)

There are other classic textbooks that will probably be mentioned that are only useful to those in that domain. Many of us can get by without a deep understanding of algorithms and data structures, most people don't need to read a compiler book, etc, etc.

However, there are some generalized books that people often recommend like The Pragmatic Programmer and Code Complete. These are, in my opinion, good recommendations if you're looking for something to read but I wouldn't say that someone starting a career in software engineering should read them. Software engineering isn't really a field with seminal texts that should be read by everyone.

For example, every political scientist should have probably read The Republic by Plato and Politics by Aristotle among many other texts. I don't think software engineering has that equivalent, partially due to the relative newness of the field and partially because the primary output of our field is not written texts.

Another interesting question would be "What codebases should someone starting their career in software engineering look at?". Are there things that the average joe programmer can learn by poking around the Linux kernel or Firefox? Maybe. I don't know. I've never done it. I'd be interested in hearing from those who have, though. Maybe I'll do my own ask HN.

edit: I feel I should clarify that this is written from the perspective of a software engineer, not an academic in computer science. For all I know there could be seminal texts that those on the academic side should all have read.

Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#35

Post by vazamb »

busterarm wrote: post #23
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #20

Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug and The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. While they're not strictly software or programming related, I really like the concepts of making interfaces that require minimal thought to use and empathizing with your users. I've seen an unfortunate amount of "programming machismo" where a confusing or poorly engineered system is used and accepted because "that's just how things wor…

Don't Make Me Think is a good one, but I always felt like its lessons could have been summed up in an infographic...though I guess that would be missing the context to get people over that hill. I guess if you don't know that intuitively, you're the kind of person that needs that book.

I honestly felt the same way about "The design of everyday things". The first few chapters are quite interesting but it gets insanely repetitive after a while. To be fair I feel that way about a lot of pop-sci books...

Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#37

Post by commandlinefan »

wilsonnb wrote: post #34

Our field is so varied that there is no good answer to this question unless you specify what you want to focus on. Some people are inevitably going to recommend The Art of Computer Programming , which hardly anyone has read and isn't that relevant to the work that 99% of us are doing. Someone will probably recommend The C Programming Language , also called K&R after the authors, but again it's not very useful unless…

> recommend The Art of Computer Programming

And, if you do decide to dive in and read them, plan to spend a few years on them.

Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#38

Post by manaskarekar »

chollida1 wrote: post #2

Three boks I'll recommend you read as soon as possible. 1) The Mythical Man month 3) The Pragmatic Programmer 3) Code Complete. The thing about these books, well atleast 1 and 3 is that when they were written they broke new ground. Or if that phrase bother you, they were the first mainstream publications that brought their core ideas to developers. Reading these books early in your career will help cement these best…

A quick reference for the important points in Pragmatic Programmer :https://blog.codinghorror.com/a-pragmatic-quick-reference/

Code Complete: http://codecourse.sourceforge.net/materials/Code-Complete-A-...

Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#39

Post by commandlinefan »

bloodorange wrote: post #12

There are many books which sound good in theory but I think my younger self would not have been able to make use of the wisdom in those books because I did not have the experience to relate to what the book was talking about. Nevertheless, if I had to ignore this factor, I too, like many others in this thread, recommend "The Mythical Man Month". However, I think, it's more important to figure out what one wants from…

> recommend "The Mythical Man Month"

But be prepared to come away very depressed than a book that's now 44 years old contains wisdom that none of the people who ought to have absorbed it have.

Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#40

Post by napsterbr »

This will be an unusual suggestion, but I highly recommend Geographic Databases and Information Systems by Stefanakis. The book is split into three parts, and the last one is specific to GIS. The other two, however, are a great introduction for databases, indices, data structures and even some graph theory. I've revisited several concepts I'd seen before at college.
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