K&R C has to be my pick. I love it because it not only teaches you C and how to implement some of the standard functions but also there's enough pearls of wisdom in there to really help you improve as a programmer.
What is K&R ?
Ask HN: Top 10 Timeless Software Books That ChangedLife as Software Engineer?
41–50 of 72 posts
Re: Ask HN: Top 10 Timeless Software Books That ChangedLife as Software Engineer?
#42Agreed, mythical man month should be on all software book lists. I would also include: Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
I didn’t read mythical man month because it felt similar to peopleware.
The classic design pattern book is very jargon heavy. Not for someone who is just starting out.
Re: Ask HN: Top 10 Timeless Software Books That ChangedLife as Software Engineer?
#43'Elements of Programming' by Stepanov and McJones 'Software Fundamentals' by Hoffman and Weiss, 'Writing Solid Code' by Maguire, 'Code Complete' by McConnell
Wow!! All this new to me. Never heard of them. Will check that out.
Re: Ask HN: Top 10 Timeless Software Books That ChangedLife as Software Engineer?
#44_The Mythical Man-Month_ by Fred Brooks is a short, easy read and remains packed full of timeless truths. His separate essay “No Silver Bullet” is included as an appendix and clarifies which problems to attack. A combination of improvements in tools, languages, and practices over the decades since have led to dramatic improvements since that essay, but, still, the problems of understanding and communication remain.
How is it different from peopleware ? To me its feel the same.
Re: Ask HN: Top 10 Timeless Software Books That ChangedLife as Software Engineer?
#45Unit Testing Principles, Practices, and Patterns by Vladimir Khorikov
Nice!! I read Working effectively with Unit Test by Jay Field.
Very short and insightful read. DAMP vs DRY was eye opener for me.
Wrote about it here : https://burhanrashid52.com/working-effectively-with-unit-tes...
Re: Ask HN: Top 10 Timeless Software Books That ChangedLife as Software Engineer?
#46Did you get this booklist from ChatGPT?
No, I did not. Making grammar mistakes is blessing now a days :)
Re: Ask HN: Top 10 Timeless Software Books That ChangedLife as Software Engineer?
#47I forgot to mention my answered tweet. So here it is : https://twitter.com/burhanrashid52/status/169351610891202580...
Re: Ask HN: Top 10 Timeless Software Books That ChangedLife as Software Engineer?
#48K&R C has to be my pick. I love it because it not only teaches you C and how to implement some of the standard functions but also there's enough pearls of wisdom in there to really help you improve as a programmer.
What is K&R ?
Re: Ask HN: Top 10 Timeless Software Books That ChangedLife as Software Engineer?
#49Related thread:
If you could only have one programming book on bookshelf what would it be?
Re: Ask HN: Top 10 Timeless Software Books That ChangedLife as Software Engineer?
#50For me, two books that changed how I thought about software were (and I may date myself here):
1. Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment[0]
This changed writing software from being about the code I was writing to being about the underlying systems my code was interacting with. My favorite little feature I learned about was the ability to pass open filehandles between processes (not threads, but processes), which I later used for open connection caching in Usenet systems.
2. Object Oriented Perl[1]
The mind-bending part of this book for me was when Conway explains about using structures other than hashes (dicts) as Perl objects. Arrays were interesting, scalars slightly more so, but then functions ... as objects. This one chapter brought clarity to functional programming that I never got from any other explanation.
All the other books listed here are on the list two, but these were two books about specific mechanics of software development that were worth so much more outside of their respective languages.
(edited to add links)
[0] https://www.pearson.com/store/p/advanced-programming-in-the-... [1] https://www.manning.com/books/object-oriented-perl