I personally think Design Patterns by the Gang of Four is a very useful book.
The Ultimate List of Programming Books
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Re: The Ultimate List of Programming Books
#12I'm surprised no one's mentioned the Dragon Book by Aho et al. (or if it has been mentioned, I missed it).
Re: The Ultimate List of Programming Books
#13I recommend CODE by Charles Petzold. In this age of tools and IDEs that abstract a lot of complexity away from the programmers, this one is an eye opener.
Re: The Ultimate List of Programming Books
#14Great list !It depends on exactly what purpose you're aiming for - I like Code Complete for pure programming, and Don't Make Me Think is a great book on UI design.
Re: The Ultimate List of Programming Books
#15I'd suggest "Modern C++ Design" by Andrei Alexandrescu, a really astonishing book about the awesome tricks and patterns you can achieve with C++, preprocessor directives and templates.
Re: The Ultimate List of Programming Books
#16I have a different choice -- I really liked Joel's Best Software Writing I.
Maybe that's just me... but that collection opened my eyes to the "bigger picture" and inspired me to think of my programming as an art/craft.
Re: The Ultimate List of Programming Books
#17I am glad the author mentioned Code complete > This book is the encyclopedia of good programming practice, Code Complete focuses on individual craftsmanship -- all the things that add up to what we instinctively call "writing clean code." This is the kind of book that has 50 pages just talking about code layout and whitespace
A great follow on to Code Complete - indispensable once you start working on projects of any decent size & need to communicate to your stakeholders about project delivery dates, etc.
Re: The Ultimate List of Programming Books
#18I'm amazed that no one has suggested The Story About Ping yet.
Re: The Ultimate List of Programming Books
#19The books listed in this article are great. Code Complete, Pragmatic Programmer, Head First Design Patterns, all great.
Re: The Ultimate List of Programming Books
#20This books really set up a fundemental view that a programmer need to know about computer.