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What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?

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Re: What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?

#21

Post by phillmv »

famousactress wrote: post #13

Man, still Code Complete? I dunno. Wasn't that big a fan, honestly. I think I got more out of the first three chapters than the sum of the rest of the book. If we're talking about technical books, Refactoring is easily the most beneficial read I can remember having. I was pleased to see it (barely) trump Design Patterns... a book that I think (through no real fault of it's own) has spoiled more developer-years than i…

Going through the list:

Code Complete: First ed 1993

Prag Prog: 1999

SICP: 80s?

K&R C: ditto

CLRS: 1990

Refactoring: 1999?

GoF DP: 1994

Mythical Man Month: late 70s, 80s?

TAOCP: Decades ago, and not a serious suggestion

Dragon book: 1986

GEB: 80s was it?

Programming Pearls: 1999

CODE: 1999

Off the top items in that list, only two have them have been published in the last TWELVE years, which in our industry is at least two full generations.

I don't know about you guys but that makes me a little sad. I think somethings have changed a lot in the last 20 years. I refuse to believe that Brooks had the last word on project management several generations ago.

I accept the notion that "the more things change, the more they stay the same" but I can't help but think this Greatest Hits List couldn't be improved somewhat.

Re: What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?

#22

Post by brooksbp »

shaggyfrog wrote: post #20

No love for Edward Yourdon's Death March? I think a copy should be given to every CS student upon graduation.

Haven't heard of Edward Yourdon, so Google'd. Since you are familiar, can you comment on this:

http://sunsite.uakom.sk/sunworldonline/swol-07-1997/swol-07-...

Re: What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?

#23

Post by v21 »

hmottestad wrote: post #6

The Mythical Man-Month As always. Considering we are making great software, but a lot of projects still seem to go over the estimated time....then I guess learning about that is what will bring us ahead. Also this talk by Greg Wilson: http://vimeo.com/9270320

I remember hearing about it while I was at uni, and checking it out of my uni library. I read through it, and it was a dusty old tome full of references to long dead systems.

And it was good, while not saying anything I was hugely shocked by, but making clear and sensible points.

And now a few years down the line, I'm out of uni and working, and I find myself toying with buying it for my boss...

Re: What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?

#24

Post by CJefferson »

Just to be contraversal, I'm going to suggest 'The Old New Thing', by Raymond Chen.

Not so much for the details of windows (although those are interesting), but it is the only book I have ever seen that attempts to show how a large software project evolves over a long period of time.

Re: What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?

#25

Post by riffraff »

phillmv wrote: post #21
famousactress wrote: post #13

Man, still Code Complete? I dunno. Wasn't that big a fan, honestly. I think I got more out of the first three chapters than the sum of the rest of the book. If we're talking about technical books, Refactoring is easily the most beneficial read I can remember having. I was pleased to see it (barely) trump Design Patterns... a book that I think (through no real fault of it's own) has spoiled more developer-years than i…

Going through the list: Code Complete: First ed 1993 Prag Prog: 1999 SICP: 80s? K&R C: ditto CLRS: 1990 Refactoring: 1999? GoF DP: 1994 Mythical Man Month: late 70s, 80s? TAOCP: Decades ago, and not a serious suggestion Dragon book: 1986 GEB: 80s was it? Programming Pearls: 1999 CODE: 1999 Off the top items in that list, only two have them have been published in the last TWELVE years, which in our industry is at leas…

it is somewhat reasonable that older books have more people who read them and learned from them, the effect of a book written more recently may yet be small but will be important later. (Cue van gogh related factoids)

Re: What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?

#26

Post by InclinedPlane »

famousactress wrote: post #13

Man, still Code Complete? I dunno. Wasn't that big a fan, honestly. I think I got more out of the first three chapters than the sum of the rest of the book. If we're talking about technical books, Refactoring is easily the most beneficial read I can remember having. I was pleased to see it (barely) trump Design Patterns... a book that I think (through no real fault of it's own) has spoiled more developer-years than i…

I think Code Complete deserves its usual top spot on these lists. You need to understand the skill set of the typical entry level coder, even after acquiring a CS degree. There is so very, very much they don't know and Code Complete helps fill in a lot of the gaps. Most usefully it helps instill the idea that it's important to use practices that are backed up by evidence and that there is a lot more to learn when you get out of school. A lot of the advice in it may seem a little outdated or even trivial to a lot of developers, but it is not less fundamental. Being inculcated in the ideas that it's bad to break the build, that you need to build often, that finding and fixing problems earlier saves a crap-ton of effort, that using proper source control tools and bug tracking tools is generally incredibly helpful. It's easy to forget that there are devs out there who don't know these things, don't have the habits we think should be universal, etc.

As far as coding skill, I agree about Refactoring. Design Patterns is just a grab-bag of tools that are useful in some situations and harmful if misused or abused. Refactoring is a set of skills that are globally useful and are married to equally important models, terminology, and advice. Studying refactoring gives devs a much stronger ability to talk about, study, understand, reason about, and modify code. I'd much rather work with someone who was an expert in refactoring than someone who was an expert in design patterns.

Edit: also, Refactoring concentrates on changing existing code vs. greenfield development, which tends to be far more useful in practice.

Re: What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?

#27

Post by tjr »

The Hacker's Dictionary (or Jargon File, if you prefer) introduced me to a wealth of tidbits about the programming field. Either directly or indirectly, it prompted me to learn Emacs, TeX, and Lisp; to study Knuth; to volunteer for the GNU Project... but this was years ago, at a time when much of the contents of the book were somewhat historical, but still relevant. It's more out of date now, and perhaps wouldn't be as useful to novice programmers as it was for me.

Re: What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?

#28

Post by brc »

feral wrote: post #19

I'm not sure that all those people on Stackexchange have read the question properly. The question is "What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?" I.e. given the set of books that every programmer should read, which one is the single most influential? As a programmer, lets consider the answer to the question, as parsed logically (regardless of intent). Typing 'most influential books' into G…

Not sure of the reason for you downvotes (perhaps it's because you're talking non-technical books), but I think everyone should read 1984 regardless of their profession. The problem being, of course, is that people take it too literally as a story and not enough as a social commentary designed to make people think twice about turning themselves over to micro-regulation.

Re: What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?

#30

Post by radicalbyte »

Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture is one of my all time favourites, though it hasn't been as influential as it should have been.

It's sitting proudly behind me next to The Mythical Man Month, the GOF book, the Dragon book, Refactoring, Code Complete and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.

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