Software engineering books to read and reread
quentin.delcourt.be
Software engineering books to read and reread
1–10 of 47 posts
Re: Software engineering books to read and reread
#2I think this is the first time I've seen a list like this with no books that I've read. I will have to pick some of these up and see if they're any good.
Re: Software engineering books to read and reread
#3I highly recommend "A Philosophy of Software Design", the book teaches me a lot about how to manage complexity in programming.
Re: Software engineering books to read and reread
#4When I'm looking for a good book to read, I always reference this site that aggregates HN recommendations: https://hacker-recommended-books.vercel.app/category/0/all-t...
Re: Software engineering books to read and reread
#5Andrew Kelley (ziglang lead) recommended Data-Oriented Design (think: Mechanical Sympathy) on twitter once [0]. I read the first few chapters and found it to be pretty neat [1].
Besides, JavaScript: The Good Parts remains one of the best programming books I've read (direly in need of a new edition).
[1] book: http://www.dataorienteddesign.com/dodbook/dodmain.html / more: https://github.com/dbartolini/data-oriented-design
Re: Software engineering books to read and reread
#6In addition to that:
1. Structure and interpretation of computer programs
2. Software architecture the hard parts
3. Designing data intensive applications
Re: Software engineering books to read and reread
#7I spent far too much time trying to help confused people understand the Design Patterns book. At the end I knew less than I did at the start.
People come to DP thinking they are going to understand the structure and maintenance of 'good code'. None of that is in that book. In fact given how we have demolished a couple of patterns that are laid out in that book (notably, Singletons as harmful), less than none of that is in that book.
I started telling people they should read Refactoring instead. And if they wanted a second recommendation for something to read after Refactoring, that they should read Refactoring a second time.
Re: Software engineering books to read and reread
#8I highly recommend "A Philosophy of Software Design", the book teaches me a lot about how to manage complexity in programming.
Second this. One of my favourite programming books. The advice is applicable to pretty much every domain of software engineering, and the lessons are philosophical (as the name suggests) rather than technical and specific, so they serve as a great jumping off point for many specific issues you might face in programming. It’s also very short which helps!
Re: Software engineering books to read and reread
#9No idea why people keep recommending Refactoring. It is super outdated showing low-level refactoring techniques in a 20 year old version of Java. If your IDE doesn't already have all these techniques built-in then you should get a new IDE.
Re: Software engineering books to read and reread
#10I spent far too much time trying to help confused people understand the Design Patterns book. At the end I knew less than I did at the start. People come to DP thinking they are going to understand the structure and maintenance of 'good code'. None of that is in that book. In fact given how we have demolished a couple of patterns that are laid out in that book (notably, Singletons as harmful), less than none of that…
Design patterns don't have much to do with 'good code'.
Many(most?) 'design patterns' are just standard ways of coming up with abstractions that your language does not provide. It's no wonder that particular book became popular at around the same time a particular programming language saw large adoption.