19 ms·

Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?

• patricklouys 9y ago
  Effective Java (lots of good generic OOP advice) Implementing Domain Driven Design
  • einpoklum 9y ago
    Although I liked Effective Java a lot, and it does contain a lot of advice relevant to many OO languages - it is the opposite of language agnostic: It's very Java-specific. Much of the content is irrelevant except in Java itself; and some of it is the opposite of "Effective language X". For example, it has a section named "Prefer lists to Arrays"; any C++ programmer will tell you the opposite (and that goes down to some of the arguments, such as Java not supporting generic arrays while C++ supports them). So - good book, but not for this purpose.
    • patricklouys 9y ago
      Yeah some chapters were useless for me, but I still took away a lot from that book as a PHP developer.
    • TeMPOraL 9y ago
      I haven't read the book, but I guess part of the argument is because ArrayList in Java is backed by an array, and is what is usually called a "vector" in other languages, while the generic List interface is what you would call a "sequence" elsewhere.
    • javabean22 9y ago
      But it also tells you why to prefer x over y, every time it gives any recommendations. And it's always explained well. So I think reading this book will help you make conscious decisions while using other languages. It's just a very well written book.. Which is pretty rare..
    • leoc 9y ago
      Of course a lot of it is Java-specific, but there's enough advice that seems relevant to $BOG_STD_OO_LANG that it's probably worthwhile for this purpose.
  • rimliu 9y ago
    A good books on OOD are "Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby" (http://www.poodr.com http://www.poodr.com) and "99 bottles of OOP"(https://www.sandimetz.com/99bottles/ https://www.sandimetz.com/99bottles/) by Sandy Metz.
• henrik_w 9y ago
  I really like: - Code Complete by Steve McConnell - The Effective Engineer by Edmond Lau - The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas
  • stinos 9y ago
    Second the Pragmatic Programmer, however: I read it when I just started programming (like not much more experienced than basic hello world and some fiddling) and, looking back, didn't really get it. I mean, I got the principles, but couldn't apply it as there was just not enough experience for the higher level abstract stuff. I recently read it again and it makes complete sense now, but I ddn't learn much new from it. So I'd suggest that if you read it, do so after a couple of years of programming.
    • danielbarla 9y ago
      Indeed, the Pragmatic Programmer book's subtitle is "from Journeyman to Master", and that's exactly what journeyman is supposed to mean - someone who's a few years into it, not bad, but not great (yet?).
  • rusanu 9y ago
    I second Code Complete
    • pier25 9y ago
      I third it
  • mytec 9y ago
    Yes to Code Complete. I read the first edition at a time I wasn't sure if I'd pursue a career in computer programming. I hadn't used a computer for nearly a month making that decision. After reading and re-reading that book during that time, I pursued programming with a passion. That book struck all the right chords with me.
    • 9y ago
• i_feel_great 9y ago
  Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. I have attempted some of the problems in Lua, Python, Erlang and Ada. It is very doable. So not just for Scheme.
  • jaddood 9y ago
    Agreed. Scheme itself is "not much of s language." It's like a language-agnostic language.
• kris-s 9y ago
  Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold. I love this book.
  • juliangamble 9y ago
    Agree - this is an amazing book.
  • throwaway7645 9y ago
    Very good. A good book to go with it is: Learning Computer Architecture with the Raspberry Pi.
    • bogomipz 9y ago
      This looks amazing(and affordable). I had not heard of this. Thanks for sharing!
      • throwaway7645 9y ago
        No problem. It is surprisingly advanced too and was co-authored by Eben Upton who started the Raspberry Pi. Nice whirlwind tour of computing architecture and history.
    • berserkpi 9y ago
      Thanks for this one. A must read for me.
  • JonoW 9y ago
    I loved this book, a must read for any dev
  • doktrin 9y ago
    Seconded. I'm one of those savages who didn't really find much value in classical tomes like MMM or Code Complete (probably because all their core points have already been distilled into contemporary best practices) - but I love this book, and even recommend it to non-technical friends & family.
• OliverJones 9y ago
  An old standard: The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks.
  • humanrebar 9y ago
    Eh. I read it but a lot of the particulars of how code is made doesn't really apply anymore. The concepts and terminology are absolutely invaluable to understand, but you can pick those up other ways.
• euske 9y ago
  The Psychology of Computer Programming by Gerald M. Weinberg It's an old book but the most eye-opening one to me.
  • pjmorris 9y ago
    From its preface: "This book has only one major purpose - to trigger the beginning of a new field of study: computer programming as a human activity, or, in short, the psychology of computer programming." Still a worthy topic, still worth your time. As was mentioned about 'The Pragmatic Programmer', I think reading this works best once you have a few years of experience.
  • mcguire 9y ago
    Sure, it was written in the '70s. It talks about punched cards and 24-hour turn around for program listings. On paper. But programmers haven't changed much since then. You'll recognize all the weirdness in software work.
• sgt 9y ago
  Thinking Forth http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/ http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/ Teaches you to think simple and elegant.
  • protomyth 9y ago
    Thinking Forth is a great suggestion since the approach goes way beyond Forth. I also would read the Brad Cox (objc creator) books if you can get them.
  • throwaway7645 9y ago
    Reading this one after Starting Forth. I wonder how many have read this that have never written a line of Forth?
• Insanity 9y ago
  In addition to those already mentioned here, I enjoyed the book 'Algorithms' by Robert Sedgewick & Kevin Wayne. The algorithms are explained, and demonstrated (in java). But with the knowledge of how the algorithm works you should be able to use them in another language. (And even though henrik_w already mentioned it, Code Complete2 is a really good book to read!)
  • cessor 9y ago
    Good advice! I have an older version, in which the implementations are explained in Pascal. I understand that newer issues cover java. I'd believe the book goes well with his coursera course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part1 https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part1
• jacquesm 9y ago
  Any good book on statistics would be a huge asset, as well as a book about debugging strategies.
  • TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > as well as a book about debugging strategies Any examples of books focused on that? I can't think of any.
    • randcraw 9y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9242384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9242384
  • BOOSTERHIDROGEN 9y ago
    Any title ?
  • a_bonobo 9y ago
    Statistics books I liked: Motulsky's Intuitive Biostatistics - this one goes over all the usual methods used in science from distributions to t-test to ANOVA to regressions etc., the basics, but doesn't introduce the maths (you use R for that) but the assumptions and pitfalls of all of those methods. Statistics Done Wrong: The Woefully Complete Guide - this is all the stuff that's going wrong in applied statistics, a bit short but enlightening Discovering Statistics Using R - a whopper of a book (~1000 pages?), it goes through everything while also being funny (the constant humor may not be for everyone). Graphs, correlations, regressions, all the MLMs and GLMs, linear models etc. pp., their assumptions, how to run them in R, how to interpret R's sometimes annoying output, etc. pp. Like Motulsky's, but wayyyyy more in-depth on the language's specifics. Naked Statistics - an intro to stats for laypeople with a focus on politics/economics, good for interpreting and assessing daily news
  • pjmorris 9y ago
    'The Cartoon Guide to Statistics', Gonick and Smith, is surprisingly substantial for its style and target, an easy way to get started.
• bstamour 9y ago
  Though it uses a subset of C++ for the code examples, Elements of Programming by Stepanov and McJones. It shows how algebra can serve as an effective foundation for engineering generic, reusable programs.
• IndrekR 9y ago
  "The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White. Not exactly a standard programming book. Not really language-agnostic either -- quite English-centric. I here assume your source code will be read by others; or by yourself after more than three months has passed.
  • captn3m0 9y ago
    Get the new edition (the old 1930 edition is still sold, but is not the one I'd recommend)
  • Bobbleoxs 9y ago
    It is an English language and writing style classic. Recommend for sure but not sure abt the relevance here.
  • SomeHacker44 9y ago
    As someone married to an journalist and now EIC and one who prides himself on concise and solid writing, I really detest this book. It's full of terrible recommendations that the authors themselves don't even follow in their own book. I strongly recommend any English authors stay miles away from it. If you want this sort of thing, read a well-respected publication's style guide (e.g., from the AP, NYT or Economist).
• agumonkey 9y ago
  meta advice: read many, some book, even great and famous, don't click at first, read something else that clicks, reread the others later. iterate.
• devnonymous 9y ago
  The Aosa series of books are brilliant imho: http://aosabook.org/en/index.html http://aosabook.org/en/index.html Titles : * The Architecture of Open Source Applications (volumes I and II) * The Performance of Open Source Applications * 500 lines or less
• dustingetz 9y ago
  Joy of Clojure & SICP. To a lesser extent, Learn You a Haskell. 7 Languages in 7 Weeks is an excellent good baby step book if these are too daunting. 7in7 was my first intro to many new ideas. Any language worth learning has this property of influencing the way you think forever. TDD, Code Complete &co are all very integrated into mainstream industry and are no longer novel. If you find yourself needing to recommend your colleagues to read Code Complete you might consider working on the skills to get a better job.
• petercooper 9y ago
  Programming Pearls by Joe Bentley. And its followup. It's old but it does get you thinking about things. I'd also recommend The Linux Programming Interface by Michael Kerrisk as it teaches so much about what makes modern Unix what it is but.. it's arguably quite oriented around C by necessity. It's not a "C book" by any means though.
  • neves 9y ago
    Can't say enough good things about Programming Pearl. Don't forget to do the exercises (or at least think about them).
  • kristjan 9y ago
    Correction: Jon Bentley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Bentley_(computer_scientist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Bentley_(computer_scientis...
• mikekchar 9y ago
  Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers. It's a bit hard to wrap your brain around the Java and C++ examples unless you have experience with them, but the techniques are timeless. You may need to practice them extensively before you understand how important they are, though. In a recent book club we did at work, a common complaint was, "This just looks like common sense". Indeed it does... though the common sense is uncommonly hard to find when you are staring at the actual situations this book helps you with.
  • sepent 9y ago
    I just finished reading this book yesterday. I am not an expert in refactoring but the book seems too old, although most advises could be still useful. Anyway, today I found a new book by the author: Brutal Refactoring: More Working Effectively with Legacy Code. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a good review of the book on the Internet. But I think it could be more useful.
    • fsloth 9y ago
      "the book seems too old" 2004 is old now? Really? Honestly, good books don't age as long as their core domain stays valid. Structurally C++ is pretty much the same as when the book came out.
      • johndubchak 9y ago
        Modern IDEs can deliver many of the recommendations of the book. Our productivity has increased a great deal. Back then there was no intellisense, code navigation through clicking on method names/classes etc. highlighted syntax errors, built-in unit test frameworks etc. It was written for a different type of developer and a different type of development environment and a specific language, C++. You haven't looked at C++ lately if you think it's the same as it was in 2004. The ISO has released new versions of the language in 2011, 2014 and ratified a new standard here in 2017. If you're writing C++ code that is consistent with 2004 C++ then you're writing a really bad version of "C with classes", not C++. Edit: Modern C++ contains native support for the filesystem, threads, lambda expressions, variants, upcoming networking library, coroutines (at least in Visual Studio), no more new/delete memory management, parallel algorithms and a ton more. This is a completely different language now and the code you write looks nothing like 2004 C++ code.
• dyarosla 9y ago
  I've really enjoyed "Dependency Injection in .NET"- despite the name, the book itself is really 95% about Dependency Injection and relatively language agnostic. It exhibits a bottom-up approach to using inversion of control in a way that makes sense and is scalable. https://www.manning.com/books/dependency-injection-in-dot-net https://www.manning.com/books/dependency-injection-in-dot-ne...
• timclark 9y ago
  Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans Implementing Domain Driven Design by Vaughn Vernon Clean Code by Robert Martin I think you will find some code in all of the books but the ideas are applicable almost everywhere.
• csneeky 9y ago
  "Types and Programming Languages" (aka "tapl")
  • agumonkey 9y ago
    Also "Software Foundations"
  • ericssmith 9y ago
    Although the OP seems to be asking for "engineering" not "programming" books, I'm going to second this. Benjamin Pierce's "Types and Programming Languages" will help you get down to what programming is really about. If you are not familiar with lambda calculus and its notation, it may be rough going at first. But lambda calculus is VERY simple, and Pierce takes you through it. The book progresses methodically to the concepts found in most common programming languages. This is one of the few truly language agnostic books on programming. SICP is close, but it is limited in relevance at times due to the limitations of a particular language (Scheme).
• shagie 9y ago
  A Pattern Language by by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language From a blog post ( http://the-whiteboard.github.io/book/review/2016/02/17/five-books-michaelt.html http://the-whiteboard.github.io/book/review/2016/02/17/five-... ) I wrote a bit ago... --- The first thing that will come to mind when seeing that title is “ug, another book on patterns.” Or maybe “I thought it was named Design Patterns - Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software” This isn’t anything like that book. Or maybe it should be. The full title of the book is A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Yes, this is a book about architecture - but not software architecture. It is about the houses and buildings that we walk live and work in. The description of A Pattern Language is one that will sound very familiar to people familiar with Design Patterns: > It is shown [in The Timeless Way of Building], that towns and buildings will not become alive, unless they are made by all the people in society, and unless these people share a common pattern language, within which to make these buildings, and unless this common pattern language is alive itself. > In this book we present one possible pattern language, of the kind called for in The Timeless Way. This language is extremely practical. It is a language that we have distilled from our own building and planning efforts over the last eight years. You can use it to work with your neighbors, to improve your town and neighborhood. You can use it to design a house for yourself, with your family; or to work with other people to design an office or a workshop or a public building like a school. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. > The elements of this language are entities called patterns. Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice. This is the book that inspired Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vissides. By reading A Pattern Language you will be able to understand what the authors of Design Patterns were trying to do and how design patterns were intended to work. It’s a good book too, who knows what else you will find useful in it. Pattern #146 describes a flexible office space. Pattern #148 describes a workspace for small work groups, #151 is about small meeting rooms, #152 is a half private office. Everyone who works in today’s world of computers and cubes, can use these ideas to conceptualize and consider improvements to the office.
  • 9y ago
• g051051 9y ago
  "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams" by DeMarco and Lister.
• alfiedotwtf 9y ago
  Books I'll treasure forever: - Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment by Stevens - Operating Systems: Design and Implementation by Tanenbaum - The Art of Unix Programming by ESR - Parsing Techniques by Grune and Jacobs - Applied Cryptography by Schneier
  • microsage 9y ago
    I'll second The Art of Unix Programming - despite the title, it has many broad programming and software architecture lessons, and "The Unix Philosophy" is applicable far beyond Unix.
    • sethrin 9y ago
      I have a pretty negative opinion on ESR these days. I could find technical arguments about many aspects of his good pieces of writing, and much of his writing is not good. His abilities as a coder are not generally remarkable, either. But mostly I don't think he's a good person. I would probably not say "Don't read ESR", but I think it has to be "Read ESR* " *but be aware that he's a polarizing figure and opinions of his merits differ (and if you happen to have a differing opinion, please use the reply button instead of the downvote button)
      • eru 9y ago
        I share your sceptical opinion about ESR, but I concur with the other commenters that The Art of Unix Programming is still worth reading. (In contrast eg to his thing about Bazaar vs Cathedral.)
        • sethrin 9y ago
          The Cathedral and the Bazaar was not an excellent piece of writing, but it was sort of necessary at the time. It has served its evangelical purpose well, to the point where it's no longer necessary. Open Source won the day, in no small part due to ESR. (I think it vital to give my enemies their due praise). TAoUP is a good book on the Unix Philosophy, but it's worth noting that the ultimate expression of these ideas (Plan 9) was a failure, and the 'everything is a file' metaphor is arguably incorrect. I hope I didn't give the impression that it was not worth reading, especially in the sense that there are few other good sources for that information (even using Unix is not likely to teach you much about its whys and wherefores). I just think that it should be read in the proper context, and that recommendations should try to include that context.
• eriknstr 9y ago
  "The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist" by Frederick P. Brooks [1] is language-agnostic and worth reading. It's about software engineering but also about hardware and some different kinds of design outside of IT. From an interview about the book [2]: > Eoin: Your new book does talk about software design in places, but it’s really about design generally, and the case studies span buildings, organizations, hardware and software. Who is the book aimed at? Are you still writing primarily for people who design software or are you writing for a broader audience? > Fred: Definitely for a broader audience. I have been surprised that The Mythical Man-Month, aimed at software engineers, seems to have resonated with a broader audience. Even doctors and lawyers find it speaks to some of their team problems. So I aimed this one more broadly. Brooks is also the author of The Mythical Man-Month which is often mentioned on HN. [1]: http://www.informit.com/store/design-of-design-essays-from-a-computer-scientist-9780201362985 http://www.informit.com/store/design-of-design-essays-from-a... [2]: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1600886 http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1600886
  • codemac 9y ago
    Just purchase this book after finding a pdf, it's really quite great, until you get to View/360 and get jealous.
• tomerbd 9y ago
  moby dick by herman mellvile the bible / unknown author the new testament / various
  • emodendroket 9y ago
    The New Testament is part of the Bible.
    • tomerbd 9y ago
      i see in my native language (hebrew) it's not.
      • emodendroket 9y ago
        Oh. We call that one the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible.
  • progrocks9 9y ago
    How is this related to programming?
    • tomerbd 9y ago
      I saw many comments and had some good programming books to suggest but thought that a little fun would not hurt. but it looks like according to the -4 i got i should have not make that joke. jokes are not allowed here?
• LoSboccacc 9y ago
  Code complete Refactoring Patterns of enterprise architecture
• d0m 9y ago
  Structure and Interpretation of Computer Program (it's written in scheme but it's mostly for convenience and its lack of syntax). Definitely the best book I've read on programming.
  • chii 9y ago
    I'd find it quite hard to apply lessons from SCIP using java or c...
    • yomly 9y ago
      What were your main takeaways from SICP? While it certainly espouses a functional style, I found the greatest lesssons to be higher level, focusing on abstraction. Though I have limited knowledge of C and Java so would be keen to hear your elaborated thoughts on this.
      • chii 9y ago
        when you start to get to the parts about abstracting a circut, and making it streamy/lazy, you'd find that the impl details of a non-lazy language can make it more difficult than it needs to be. Also, as a beginner, you don't want both the difficulties of contepts _and_ the difficulties of language to combine to stop you from learning as effectively.
        • yomly 9y ago
          But Scheme isn't a lazy language - granted, you'll need a language that supports first class functions to lift their implementation of a stream though. >Also, as a beginner, you don't want both the difficulties of contepts _and_ the difficulties of language to combine to stop you from learning as effectively. Are you referring to the need to learn Scheme to work through SICP? While the asker specifically requested language-agnostic books, Scheme was chosen as a language for SICP for being a "syntax-free" language...
          • chii 9y ago
• 0xbadf00d 9y ago
  I would recommend "Sorting and Searching" Volume 3 from Donald Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming". Fantastic, in-depth read.
  • twohlix_ 9y ago
    I also emphatically suggest D.Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming". Super dense, not like a sit down and read from cover to cover, but really good set to have around.
    • Posibyte 9y ago
      I also heavily recommend this. It was gifted to me from a professor at my university while leaving, and I left it alone for a few years. But when I finally opened it up, wow. You can appreciate just how dense the information is. It really reads as if no sentence was written without some purpose of conveying information. Definitely go slow reading this series so you can properly ingest what's written.
    • xemdetia 9y ago
      Another Knuth-related one that is less programming that I found rewarding to read was 'Concrete Mathematics.' It is per its own description a lengthier version of the TAOCP, but it's mostly or entirely exempt of actual code. But because of the subject matter it spawned from it tends to cover math of 'what comes later' so there is a very specific perspective of Knuth style that comes from it and its easier to see the eventual application.
      • _asummers 9y ago
        I had a professor who would joke that it was called Concrete Mathematics both because it was foundational math for computer science, but also because it was as hard as concrete.
• rajadigopula 9y ago
  A short book (25 pages), but I find it worth mentioning here - 6 Things About Programming That Every Computer Programmer Should Know - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Things-Programming-Computer-Programmer-Should-ebook/dp/B010C6DWFG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496664834&sr=8-1&keywords=6+things+about+programming https://www.amazon.co.uk/Things-Programming-Computer-Program... A really well written short glimpse of things every programmer must know.
• vitomd 9y ago
  If you liked Clean Code, read Clean Coder. A quick summary: Robert C. Martin introduces the disciplines, techniques, tools, and practices of true software craftsmanship. This book is packed with practical advice–about everything from estimating and coding to refactoring and testing. It covers much more than technique: It is about attitude.
  • gonzofish 9y ago
    I feel that books like Clean Coder should be recommended reading for people in their first job. I really feel like it made me think about how I do my job in a more professional, quality-focused manner than even Clean Code did.
  • mcguire 9y ago
    https://maniagnosis.crsr.net/2012/03/clean-coder.html https://maniagnosis.crsr.net/2012/03/clean-coder.html
• whorleater 9y ago
  - Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective
• binarymax 9y ago
  Programming Pearls. Great short book to get you thinking creatively and how to dissect algorithmic problems, language agnostic with pseudocode examples. Non-programming but still highly relevant for a professional programmer: Mythical Man Month, and Peopleware.
  • ryan-allen 9y ago
    I bought this and lent it to someone shortly after I bought it, I guess I'm gonna have to buy it again!
  • eckza 9y ago
    MMM is a must-read, for anyone that wants to effectively engage in the software development lifecycle, IMO. Developer, project manager, doesn't matter.
• mtreis86 9y ago
  Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter is about the intersection of music, math, and computers.
  • randcraw 9y ago
    And it's playful. It seems like, 20+ years ago, there were a lot more authors who wrote playful tech books. I miss 'em.
    • mtreis86 9y ago
      Any to recommend?
      • pjmorris 9y ago
        'A Fortran Coloring Book', Kaufmann (MIT Press) 'Starting Forth', and 'Thinking Forth' by Leo Brodie. I'd say the 'Head First' books are modern equivalents with a similar spirit.
• bandrami 9y ago
  Let Over Lambda. Not entirely agnostic, but delves into Forth, Smalltalk, C, Scheme, and Perl while overall being about Lisp. Fascinating book; really a look at metaprogramming (macros) and closures (that's what "let over lambda" is).
  • weavie 9y ago
    Whilst being a great book, you are definitely correct in your assertion that this book is not agnostic!
    • bandrami 9y ago
      True, but it goes into a lot of different languages, which can amount to the same thing
• MikeTaylor 9y ago
  Definitely, definitely, Kernighan and Plauger's 1976 book _Software Tools_. The code is in RATFOR (a structured dialect of FORTRAN) but all the ideas are language-independent. It remains, four decades on, the best book I have ever read on how to solve the real problems of real program development. Very practical, and covers a vast amount of ground. (As it happens, I am re-reading it right now.)
  • bewuethr 9y ago
    There is also an edition using Pascal, "Software Tools in Pascal" from 1981, which might be a little more accessible than the RATFOR edition. I fully agree with the recommendation as such, though.
    • rpeden 9y ago
      The code from "Software Tools in Pascal" mostly just works in FreePascal, too. So it's pretty easy to jump in and work through the examples in the book.
  • pjmorris 9y ago
    +1. I have a corner of a bookshelf reserved for everything Kernighan, e.g. both Software Tools editions, both C Language editions, The Unix Programming Environment, The Practice of Programming, The AWK Language, even a copy of The Elements of Programming Style. I, and my employers and clients, may owe more to Mr. Kernighan for his teaching and programming style, than anyone else.
• fastbeef 9y ago
  Not a programming book per se, but seeing that you had "The Healthy Programmer" in your list I'll throw it out there: "The underachievers manifesto" - a short book that does wonders for your mental health in a world that values productivity and superficial, short-sighted goals over everything else. https://www.amazon.com/Underachievers-Manifesto-Accomplishing-Little-Feeling/dp/0811853683 https://www.amazon.com/Underachievers-Manifesto-Accomplishin...
• lcuff 9y ago
  An Introduction to General Systems Thinking. Gerald Weinberg. This book, now over 40 years old, addresses the 'core within the core' of the reality of systems. Unbelievably good, with a very light-hearted tone.
  • swah 9y ago
    Why this was downvoted?
    • swah 9y ago
      Why was this downvoted?
  • andyjohnson0 9y ago
    Also Systemantics by John Gall.
• le-mark 9y ago
  Algorithmics: the Spirit of Computing by David Harel[1] is really fantastic, can't recommend it enough. [1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2378136.Algorithmics http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2378136.Algorithmics
• gtrubetskoy 9y ago
  One that hasn't been mentioned yet: "Coders at Work". A very enlightening book about how some of the best programmers in the world approach the craft in their own words.
  • emodendroket 9y ago
    Yes, this book is really interesting.
  • badperson 9y ago
    loved that book, haven't read it in a number of years, I should break it out again.
  • LostInTheWoods2 9y ago
    Also noteworthy in that series is Founders at Work, and Gamers at Work.
  • henrik_w 9y ago
    Yes, "Coders at Work" is great!
• DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
  Some of the most interesting books I've read in support of my software-development work are: * "Compilers: Principles, Techniques, & Tools" by Aho et al. (i.e., "the dragon book") * "Data Flow Analysis: Theory and Practice" by Khedker et al. * "Understanding MySQL Internals" by Sasha Pachev. * "Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques" by Gray and Reuter. * "Fundamentals of Wireless Communication" by Tse and Viswanath. * "Genetic Programming: An Intrduction" by Banzhaf et al. * "Applied Crytography" by Schneier. EDIT: A few additional comments: (1) Although these books are problem-domain specific, some of them had benefits outside of their problem domains: * The Dataflow book has some great coverage of fixpoint algorithms. It's really helpful to recognize when some problems are best solved by fixpoint analysis. * The "dragon book" takes a lot of the mystery out of compilers. That's somewhat helpful when writing code that needs to be fast. It's super helpful if you want to work with compiler-related technologies such as LLVM. * Understanding the fundamental challenges of transaction processing helps you avoid massive misadventures when dealing with databases or concurrent / multithreaded systems. (2) YMMV, but I've found it hard to soldier through these books unless I had a need to for my job or for school.
  • sethrin 9y ago
    > "Understanding MySQL Internals" Why this, as opposed to a more general text on databases? MySQL is popular, but few would accuse it of actually being a good database. I feel like the point at which knowing about the internals of MySQL becomes relevant is probably the point at which you should use a better database.
    • eof 9y ago
      And just abandon all that domain knowledge your garnered along your journey?
    • jerf 9y ago
      I would assume that any book about the internals of a database would be suitable. MySQL is plenty real enough to be educational to learn about its internals, yea verily, even its quirks, and to learn a lot about how other databases work. Even the "NoSQL" databases will use many of the same primitives. An equivalent substitution for another database would be fine; anyone have any suggestions? Then again, such a substitution is really solving a non-problem.
• RossBencina 9y ago
  I see you read Kent Beck's TDD book. A good follow-up might be Roy Osherove's "The Art of Unit Testing." I found it to have a lot of pragmatic, practical advice. It's not the final word, but it is a good next step after Kent Beck's book. It has some C#-specific material, but that stuff is interesting to read about even if you're working in other languages. Lot's good suggestions in this thread, here's one I didn't see: "Software Runaways - lessons learned from massive software project failures," by Robert L. Glass.
• petra 9y ago
  Sanzy Metz is a great teacher of object-oriented design. Read her ruby book. "Introduction to algorithms : a creative approach" by Udi Manber. ". Great book to learn algorithm design.
• zimmund 9y ago
  Introduction to algorithms[1] is a great book to improve how you think about code and the way you implement your solutions. Even if you are a seasoned programmer you'll find it useful. [1]: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/introduction-algorithms https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/introduction-algorithms
  • flor1s 9y ago
    We used it in my algorithms class in uni, I found it a bit heavy on the math side of things. For me a more code oriented book such as Skiena's The Algorithm Design Manual works better.
• JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  I think "The Practice of Programming" was and is very good. https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Programming-Addison-Wesley-Professional-Computing/dp/020161586X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496666291&sr=8-1&keywords=the+practice+of+programming https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Programming-Addison-Wesley-P...
• ishmaelahmed 9y ago
  "The Pragmatic Programmer" by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• joshdev 9y ago
  * Mythical Man Month * Pragmatic Programmer * Code Complete
• known 9y ago
  Check reading lists in https://www.joelonsoftware.com/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/
• qpre 9y ago
  Not a book per say, but "Out of The Tar Pit" by Moseley and Marks is definitely a must-read. Abstract: ``` Complexity is the single major difficulty in the successful development of large-scale software systems. Following Brooks we distinguish accidental from essential difficulty, but disagree with his premise that most complexity remaining in contemporary systems is essential. We identify common causes of complexity and discuss general approaches which can be taken to eliminate them where they are accidental in nature. To make things more concrete we then give an outline for a potential complexity-minimizing approach based on functional programming and Codd’s relational model of data. ``` Link: http://shaffner.us/cs/papers/tarpit.pdf http://shaffner.us/cs/papers/tarpit.pdf
• fazkan 9y ago
  Its odd that no one mentioned it but head first into design patterns is a great/light book on design patterns....
  • matt_s 9y ago
    I'd second the Head First Design Patterns. The style of writing is light and fun. There are definitely concepts about abstraction, etc. that may take a while to grok and the different approaches help.
    • fbomb 9y ago
      YMMV. I found the style extremely distracting to the subject matter.
  • hoorayimhelping 9y ago
    I loved this book. It really helped me understand the power and effectiveness of OO design when used correctly.
  • eru 9y ago
    They might work for some, but I always find all the "Head First" books to be very fluffy.
    • vram22 9y ago
      I think that is part of their goal / style. They are meant to be lightweight and fun and easy-to-read intros to topics for beginners, who would get put off by more formal / less joke-y prose.
      • vram22 9y ago
        A bit like the Dummies series of books, in fact. Which is not to say that those books are not good. I've read a few of them, and they have some good matter.
      • mcguire 9y ago
• ranko 9y ago
  Growing Object-Oriented Software Guided by Tests, by Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce. The examples are, IIRC, in Java, but the ideas about TDD are applicable to any OO language. It'll make you think more about how you write testable code and the test themselves.
• bybjorn 9y ago
  The Pragmatic Programmer
• kentf 9y ago
  The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas
  • ryan-allen 9y ago
    One of the first books I read that led me on to craploads of other books. It mentioned Peopleware, Mythical Man Month and just opened up a whole world of books about programming and being a programmer that were not 'do this then that to achieve Y'. Gonna have to pick that one up again and see what else I can glean from it years later :)
• mathnode 9y ago
  - The Pragmatic Programmer - The Practice of Programming - The Mythical Man Month - The Cathedral and the Bazaar - The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Introduction to Algorithms - Hackers and Painters Some of these do contain mixed language code examples, but they are expressed in a way to be agnostic. A problem is a problem; in any language.
  • optimuspaul 9y ago
    The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?
    • cpr 9y ago
      Zen and the Art...
    • superpope99 9y ago
      They mean 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' by the late Robert M. Pirsig - I second the recommendation
    • dreeri 9y ago
      Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is about how people see quality.
    • inerg 9y ago
      I believe he was talking about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (https://www.amazon.ca/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Inquiry/dp/0060589469/ https://www.amazon.ca/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Inquiry...). It's a nice fiction book that goes into how different people view the world. At least that's what I've gotten out of it so far, I'm only about a quarter of the way through it so I might be missing some of the things it covers.
      • optimuspaul 9y ago
        yes, I assumed that to be the book they meant. I read it 25 years ago. I am just surprised that it would be included in this list. I see no connection to the question posed.
• vblord 9y ago
  Best design pattern book i've read is "Head First Design Patterns: A Brain-Friendly Guide". It's fun and very informative.
• heeton 9y ago
  If I can suggest a talk rather than a book, "Hammock Driven Development" by Rich Hickey (creator of Clojure) is one of my favourites.
• pjmorris 9y ago
  'Implementation Patterns', Kent Beck. A semi-language-agnostic extension of his 'Smalltalk Patterns'for how to clearly and consistently express what you're saying when you code. 'Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering', Robert Glass. Glass presents a list of things everybody knows, or ought to know, and gives both academic and opinionated support and/or critique for why they are and aren't so. 'Making Software', Oram and Wilson. An edited collection of papers on evidence-based software engineering. 'The Deadline', Tom DeMarco. A thinly disguised commercial for his advice on how to organize software development teams and organizations, packaged as light, light novel.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• Rannath 9y ago
  Not really programming books, but these have helped me with programming jobs. -How to make friends and influence people. Anyone who works collaboratively with people needs to be able to communicate effectively. -The Elements of style. Writing understandable code is similar to any other type of writing.
  • Cerium 9y ago
    Elements of Style, also referred to as "Strunk and White" is a gem of a style guide. It can be read every few years to get back on track.
  • chuckdries 9y ago
    > How to make friends and influence people I swear I've had this book recommended to me at least a thousand times, I'm almost suspicious though I don't know that suspicious is the right word
    • Swizec 9y ago
      Read it. It's great.
    • beat 9y ago
      The title seems, well, creepy, in modern language. Like it's manipulative. It's not. It was written in the 1930s, and has been continuously in print since then. How many books have achieved that honor? That's because it's one of the best books you will ever read. Absorbing its lessons will make you a better person.
  • cestith 9y ago
    There's also The Elements of Programming Style by Kernighan and Pike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Programming_Style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Programming_St...
• W0lf 9y ago
  I've gathered all the book titles in this thread and created Amazon affiliate links (if you don't mind. Otherwise you still have all the titles together :-) ) A Pattern Language, Alexander and Ishikawa and Silverstein http://amzn.to/2s9aSSc http://amzn.to/2s9aSSc Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment , Stevens http://amzn.to/2qPOMjN http://amzn.to/2qPOMjN Algorithmics: the Spirit of Computing, Harel http://amzn.to/2rW5FNS http://amzn.to/2rW5FNS Applied Crytography, Wiley http://amzn.to/2rsULxS http://amzn.to/2rsULxS Clean Code, Martin http://amzn.to/2sIOWtQ http://amzn.to/2sIOWtQ Clean Coder, Martin http://amzn.to/2rWgbEP http://amzn.to/2rWgbEP Code Complete, McConnel http://amzn.to/2qSUIwE http://amzn.to/2qSUIwE Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, Petzold http://amzn.to/2rWfR9d http://amzn.to/2rWfR9d Coders at Work, Seibel http://amzn.to/2qPCasZ http://amzn.to/2qPCasZ Compilers: Principles, Techniques, & Tools, Aho http://amzn.to/2rCSUVA http://amzn.to/2rCSUVA Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective, O'Hallaron and Bryant http://amzn.to/2qPY5jH http://amzn.to/2qPY5jH Data Flow Analysis: Theory and Practice, Khedker http://amzn.to/2qTnSvr http://amzn.to/2qTnSvr Dependency Injection in .NET, Seemann http://amzn.to/2rCz0tV http://amzn.to/2rCz0tV Domain Driven Design, Evans http://amzn.to/2sIGM4N http://amzn.to/2sIGM4N Fundamentals of Wireless Communication, Tse and Viswanath http://amzn.to/2rCTmTM http://amzn.to/2rCTmTM Genetic Programming: An Intrduction, Banzhaf http://amzn.to/2s9sdut http://amzn.to/2s9sdut Head First Design Patterns, O'Reilly http://amzn.to/2rCISUB http://amzn.to/2rCISUB Implementing Domain-Driven Design, Vernon http://amzn.to/2qQ2G5u http://amzn.to/2qQ2G5u Intrduction to Algorithms, CLRS http://amzn.to/2qXmSBU http://amzn.to/2qXmSBU Introduction to General Systems Thinking, Weinberg http://amzn.to/2qTuGJw http://amzn.to/2qTuGJw Joy of Clojure, Fogus and Houser http://amzn.to/2qPL4qr http://amzn.to/2qPL4qr Let over Lambda, Hoyte http://amzn.to/2rWljcp http://amzn.to/2rWljcp Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, Tanenbaum http://amzn.to/2rKudsw http://amzn.to/2rKudsw Parsing Techniques, Grune and Jacobs http://amzn.to/2rKNXfn http://amzn.to/2rKNXfn Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, DeMarco and Lister http://amzn.to/2qTu86F http://amzn.to/2qTu86F Programming Pearls, Bentley http://amzn.to/2sIRPe9 http://amzn.to/2sIRPe9 Software Process Design: Out of the Tar Pit, McGraw-Hill http://amzn.to/2rVX0v0 http://amzn.to/2rVX0v0 Software Runaways, Glass http://amzn.to/2qT2mHn http://amzn.to/2qT2mHn Sorting and Searching, Knuth http://amzn.to/2qQ4NWQ http://amzn.to/2qQ4NWQ Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Abelson and Sussman http://amzn.to/2qTflsk http://amzn.to/2qTflsk The Art of Unit Testing, Manning http://amzn.to/2rsERDu http://amzn.to/2rsERDu The Art of Unix Programming, ESR http://amzn.to/2sIAXUZ http://amzn.to/2sIAXUZ The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist, Brooks http://amzn.to/2rsPjev http://amzn.to/2rsPjev The Effective Engineer, Lau http://amzn.to/2s9fY0X http://amzn.to/2s9fY0X The Elements of Style, Strunk and White http://amzn.to/2svB3Qz http://amzn.to/2svB3Qz The Healthy Programmer, Kutner http://amzn.to/2qQ2MtQ http://amzn.to/2qQ2MtQ The Linux Programming Interface, Kerrisk http://amzn.to/2rsF8Xi http://amzn.to/2rsF8Xi The Mythical Man-Month, Brooks http://amzn.to/2rt0dAR http://amzn.to/2rt0dAR The Practice of Programming, Kernighan and Pike http://amzn.to/2qTje0C http://amzn.to/2qTje0C The Pragmatic Programmer, Hunt and Thomas http://amzn.to/2s9dlvS http://amzn.to/2s9dlvS The Psychology of Computer Programming, Weinberg http://amzn.to/2rsPypy http://amzn.to/2rsPypy Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques, Gray and Reuter http://amzn.to/ http://amzn.to/ Types and Programming Languages, Pierce http://amzn.to/2qT2d6G http://amzn.to/2qT2d6G Understanding MySQL Internals, Pachev http://amzn.to/2svXuFo http://amzn.to/2svXuFo Working Effectively with Legacy Code, Feathers http://amzn.to/2sIr09R http://amzn.to/2sIr09R Zen of graphics programming, Abrash http://amzn.to/2rKIW6Q http://amzn.to/2rKIW6Q
• oumua_don17 9y ago
  - The Elements of Computing Systems: Build the virtual hardware and software from scratch. Software includes writing a compiler in a language of your choice, so agnostic in that sense. - The Art of Metaobject Protocol: Extremely insightful treatment of OOP! Alan Kay called it as the 'best book in ten years' at OOPSLA 97.
  • lotophage 9y ago
    Also in MOOC form now too: https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer
• BFatts 9y ago
  'The Pragmatic Programmer' is a fantastic language-agnostic manual that still applies heavily today.
• cessor 9y ago
  Here are my recommendations. Each is a placeholder for a complete discussion :) Psychology of Programming ========================= 1. "Psychology of Computer Programming" - Gerald M. Weinberg 2. "Software Design – Cognitive Aspect" by Francoise Detienne 3. "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Kahneman and Tversky 4. "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates U" by Daniel Pink Book 1 is a really nice read and touches a lot of the social and workplace aspects of computer programming. Book 2 is more focused on modern research of program comprehension in relation to cognition. It's a little older, and often just scratches the surface, but they both nicely show that a lot of social and psychological factors are relevant for programming, independent of the programming languages developers use. 3. and 4. add some more background infos to it if you want to dive deeper. Career Development ================== - "Hackers and Painters" - Paul Graham - "The Passionate Programmer" - Chad Fowler In addition to the Pragmatic Programmer which has been mentioned in other comments, these books really helped me understand where I wanted to be as a programmer. Technology ========== With a stronger focus on technology I recommend: - "Language Implementation Patterns" - Terence Parr - "A Retargetable C Compiler: Design and Implementation" - Hanson, Fraser I found them more helpful than the Red Dragon Book. The latter is good, but as a beginner I felt a little lost and Terence Parr's book was much more helpful. Practice & Karate ================= - "Elegant Objects" by Yegor Bugayenko - "Working Effectively With Legacy Code" - Michael Feathers - "Growing OO Software, Guided by tests" - Pryce, Freeman - "Test Driven Development" by Kent Beck And, this last one I can't recommend enough: "XUnit Test Patterns" by Gerard Meszaros Kent Beck's TDD is good book to start with. Even if you feel like you have got testing figured out, you should try TDD. It has more to do with discipline and getting things done, rather than writing code fast or smart or efficiently. Someone I follow on twitter once called it "thinking at sustainable pace", which is really what TDD is about. A lot of people are simply offended by the idea to "test first". To me, "test first" is roughly equivalent to "think before you code". Maybe this is what others find offensive. As for an advanced view on testing, Gerard Meszaros's book is really good. It is a catalogue of testing patterns that helps to structure testing code in a nice way. Depending on OP's skill I would recommend the following: Be very carefull with the following books: - Design Patterns - Gang of Four - Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture - {Doing Anything with} Domain Driven Design These books are really valuable, but somewhat problematic. Sometimes they will give you a hammer and make everything look like a nail. Sometimes they make it easy to focus on the wrong things. They come over as precise and clear, but really aren't, which will cause discussions and poor choices. On the surface, they sound nice, simple and friendly, but on a deeper level, they are really difficult to understand. If you want to read them, I encourage you to do so with your colleague and discuss them critically. Maybe you can have a wednesday afternoon bookclub meeting at your company. We once did that for "Working Effectively with Legacy Code". I collected some more suggestions on a trello board a while ago, which should be accessible here: https://trello.com/b/lw96ei6d/books https://trello.com/b/lw96ei6d/books If you wish to contribute, just let me know. Then initial collection started when we got together after an open space. BTW: Thank you all for your suggestions! I will add some of your recommendations to the trello board.
• mytec 9y ago
  Smalltalk Best Practices by Kent Beck. I feel the advice and experience this book provides goes well beyond Smalltalk.
• danschumann 9y ago
  I liked "founders at work"
• mighty_warrior 9y ago
  Apprenticeship Patterns - A great book more focused on being an good software engineer and less on software specific details. Online for free at http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001813/index.html http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001813/index.ht...
• badperson 9y ago
  this guy has a blog that recommends a lot of great books http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-100-books-part-one/ http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-100-books-part-one/
• aracarie 9y ago
  Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming - Peter Van Roy
• steego 9y ago
  A really fun read is The New Turing Omnibus. I'd call it fun reading rather than required reading. Basically, it's a collection of small fun loosely related chapters about various ideas in computer science. It's the kind of book where you can open it up in the middle and start reading. Over the years, I must have purchased 5 or 6 copies because I keep giving them away.
  • SourPatch 9y ago
    Great recommendation! His book The Armchair Universe is pretty much what made me want to be a programmer. I enjoy books that keep the fun in programming.
• agentultra 9y ago
  Programming in the 1990s by Edward Cohen. A rather practical introduction to the calculation of programs from their specifications. Plenty of introductions to computer programming involve guessing your program into existence. This is one of those rare books that give a solid, pragmatic approach (with examples) of developing software from solid, mathematically sound specifications and avoiding errors by design. Even if you don't adopt formal methods in your day-to-day work (often we're not building sky-scrapers) it's a useful book to give you insight into the kinds of questions one should be asking and thinking about when designing software systems.
• jordigh 9y ago
  It's not language-agnostic, but it's still a great book: The D Programming Language. The reason I recommend it is because Alexandrescu is a great writer who knows a lot about programming languages and the kinds of tradeoffs that a low-level, practical, and safe programming language like D must do. Even if you never intend to program in D, I encourage you to read this book to get a different view on metaprogramming, memory safety, and concurrency.
• mrwnmonm 9y ago
  The Practice of Programming and take a look at this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13448818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13448818
• paublyrne 9y ago
  Practical Object-oriented Design in Ruby is a great read with a lot of advice on approaching design problems, approaching refactoring and thinking about how to model. It's in Ruby but I feel a lot of its advice is general.
  • beat 9y ago
    aka "Why duck typing is better than inheritance". Yes, great book, but if you're using a language that doesn't support duck typing, some of the concepts will frustrate you and make you wish you were using Ruby instead.
    • rimliu 9y ago
      You can do some (most) of the stuff using interfaces/protocols in languages that support these.
      • beat 9y ago
        It's not quite as natural, though. On the other hand, making it explicit is often a Good Thing.
• bluetwo 9y ago
  Why New Systems Fail: Theory and Practice Collide by Phil Simon
• ctrlp 9y ago
  If you consider C to be language-agnostic, here are some gems. These are personal favorites as much for their excellent writing as for their content. The Unix Programming Environment was published in 1984. I read it over 20 years later and was astonished at how well it had aged. For a technical book from the 80's, it is amazingly lucid and well-written. It pre-dates modern unix, so things have changed but much that goes unstated in newer books (for brevity) is explicit in UPE. (Plus, the history itself is illuminating.) It gave me a much deeper understanding of how programs actually run over computer hardware. Examples in C are old-school and take a bit of close reading but oh so rewarding. https://www.amazon.com/Unix-Programming-Environment-Prentice-Hall-Software/dp/013937681X https://www.amazon.com/Unix-Programming-Environment-Prentice... Mastering Algorithms in C. Another fantastically well-written book that shows (with practical examples) how to implement common algorithms. This is just such a great book! https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Algorithms-Techniques-Sorting-Encryption/dp/1565924533 https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Algorithms-Techniques-Sorti... Also: Code (Petzold). This one is truly language-agnostic. Others have mentioned it already. Can't recommend enough if you're iffy on the internals of computers and programming. https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Software/dp/073560505X https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw... Write Great Code (Volumes I and II). Randall Hyde's books are fantastic explications of the underlying computer operations. Examples are in assembly or pseudo-code but easy to understand. https://www.amazon.com/Write-Great-Code-Understanding-Machine-ebook/dp/B0096FEJGQ/ https://www.amazon.com/Write-Great-Code-Understanding-Machin...
  • drio 9y ago
    +1 to Code (Petzold). I would absolutely start with that. One of my favorite books. The build a computer course from coursera (https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer) is the natural next step after reading code.
• pjmlp 9y ago
  A few ones: "Algorithms and Data Structures" from Niklaus Wirth. "Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd Edition" from Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, Clifford Stein. "The Garbage Collection Handbook: The Art of Automatic Memory Management" from Richard Jones and Antony Hosking "Code Complete" from Steve McConnell "From Mathematics to Generic Programming" from Alexander Stepanov and Daniel Rose
• gameguy43 9y ago
  Something on data structures and algorithms. I like /coding interview/ resources for this, because they skip the proofs and get to the point faster. Cracking the coding interview is good So is interviewcake.com (disclosure: I made it)
• dzuc 9y ago
  http://computationbook.com/ http://computationbook.com/
• thanatropism 9y ago
  For our Algorithms class in Applied Mathematics we used: Dasgupta, Papadimitriou and Vazirani: "Algorithms" (McGraw Hill) Kleinberg, Tardos: "Algorithm Design" (Pearson)
• hikarudo 9y ago
  "The Art of Readable Code", by Dustin Boswell and Trevor Foucher. Simple ways to make code more readable.
• brightball 9y ago
  SQL Performance Explained - Markus Winand - Excellent book that gets into the internals of what developers need to know about SQL and covers each part as it relates to the 4 major SQL databases (Oracle, SQL Server, Postgres, MySQL) - Also has an online version: http://use-the-index-luke.com/sql/table-of-contents http://use-the-index-luke.com/sql/table-of-contents The Code Book - Simon Singh - It's just a good read that covers cryptography and message hiding throughout history. Probably a solid book for somebody around high school age.
  • stephenwilcock 9y ago
    +1 for SQL Performance Explained. One of the best vendor agnostic resources for understanding how databases work.
  • alecco 9y ago
    I like his writing but that is not "language-agnostic"
• candiodari 9y ago
  Purely functional data structures by Chris Okasaki Let Over Lambda forgot by whom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c Not technically a book, but watch it anyway.
  • c3534l 9y ago
    > Purely functional data structures by Chris Okasaki Is that really language agnostic? I don't know how you could follow along with it without knowing some ML or Haskell.
    • mtalantikite 9y ago
      Yeah, I had a hard time getting into that book the first time around due to a lack of ML knowledge. Once you have some ML or Haskell I'd say it's worth a read.
    • weavie 9y ago
      You would need a cursory knowledge of ml to be able to understand it, but you can implement the examples in plenty of other languages. The principles taught are fairly universal. (At least for the first half, I haven't made it beyond that yet...)
  • neutronicus 9y ago
    Let Over Lambda is by Doug Hoyte.
• trimbo 9y ago
  "Dynamics of Software Development" by Jim McCarthy
• kitplummer 9y ago
  Pragmatic Practices of an Agile Developer!
• happy-go-lucky 9y ago
  No one has mentioned The Little Schemer. Edit: Written in a question-answer style, it’s geared toward luring you into recursion and functional programming.
  • xyjprc 9y ago
    Love the Little Schemer! Lots of interesting and challenging questions!
• javabean22 9y ago
  Programming Pearls (2nd Edition) by Jon Bentley Effective Java (2nd Edition) by Joshua Bloch. It's a Java book but it's language-agnostinc in a way. A great book.
• demircancelebi 9y ago
  I have been reading Game Programming Patterns lately. It explains the design patterns with examples from games, and it is really well written by an engineer at Google (Bob Nystrom): http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/ http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/ After I complete this book, I think I'll read his other book: Crafting Interpreters. This one teaches about implementing a programming language from scratch, once in Java and a second time in C.
• unfocused 9y ago
  "How to Solve It" by George Pólya
• beat 9y ago
  Okay, here's some I haven't seen mentioned yet, although these may be pretty far afield for you: Drift into Failure, by Sidney Dekker. Studies failure analysis in complex systems, and basically argues that our classic reductionist/scientific method approach is the wrong way to study complex engineering failures. How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand. This isn't about programming. It's about architecture, in the build-a-building sense. It studies what happens to buildings over the course of their lives, as opposed to just when they're first built. Enterprise Integration Patterns, by Gregor Hohpe and Bobby Woolf. Learn how to use message queues and service busses correctly. Honestly, just read the first couple of chapters (65 pages or so), and the rest is reference, to look up as needed, so it's not as imposing as it sounds. Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, by W. Richard Stevens. This book was my bible back in the olden days before http and ssh and stuff (I'm olde). Knowing how sockets really work can be an absolute lifesaver, even in this modern world of giant protocol stacks. Especially in this modern world. The Art of Computer Programming, vols 1-3, by Donald Knuth. Only a madman would actually read them all, but they're good to have to remind you that there are mountains you can't even begin to climb. A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge. A science fiction novel that is really about hacking, set thousands of years in the future, when Moore's Law is long defeated and programmers are basically archeologists. Design Patterns (aka Gang of Four), by Gamma/Helm/Johnson/Vlissides. There are lots of good books on design patterns, but you should really read the one that started it all. (For extra credit, read A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander - a book about urban architecture that inspired it.) Continuous Delivery, by Jez Humble and David Farley. Stop thinking about your program in isolation, and learn how to deploy effectively! Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini. This is DHH's favorite book. Learn how people think, and how to use that to design better products. How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. Not creepy at all, despite how the title sounds in today's language. This book is the bible of how to get along with others. It's been in continuous print since before WWII, for good reason. The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries. The best work you do is the work you find you don't need to do. Learn how to fail fast and save time on projects and product development, by building what customers want rather than what you think they need.
  • MR_HANDS 9y ago
    these are all great! thanks
• __bearMountain 9y ago
  Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices - by Uncle Bob Martin One of the most influential programming books I've ever read. The code is in Java, but it's east to follow even for a non-Java developer, and the truths are universal. Learn the most fundamental design and encapsulation patterns. Uncle Bob Martin is a legend. This book has probably made me tens of thousands of dollars. https://www.amazon.com/Software-Development-Principles-Patterns-Practices/dp/0135974445 https://www.amazon.com/Software-Development-Principles-Patte...
• otodic 9y ago
  The Pragmatic Programmer: https://pragprog.com/book/tpp/the-pragmatic-programmer https://pragprog.com/book/tpp/the-pragmatic-programmer
  • suyash 9y ago
    Plus 1 to this one and another one by the same Publisher is 'Pragmatic Thinking & Learning Refactor your Wetware'
    • beat 9y ago
      That's by Andy Hunt, one of the Pragmatic Programming authors. Pragmatic Programmer, as a publisher, has produced dozens of books. They're like another O'Reilly.
• suyash 9y ago
  I'd also recommend Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach written by Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig.
• bphogan 9y ago
  Can I plug my book, Exercises for Programmers? https://pragprog.com/book/bhwb/exercises-for-programmers https://pragprog.com/book/bhwb/exercises-for-programmers It's a collection of programming exercises I used when I taught introduction to programming. They start out incredibly trivial, ("prompt for a name, print "hello [name]" back to the screen. But the trivial part is, in my opinion, the fun part when you work with a new language. That program is a two line program in Ruby. But it might be much more complicated if you implemented that as your first GUI app in Swift for iOS. I wrote the book to teach beginners, but I and others use those exercises to learn new languages. The book has no answers, just the problem statements.
• l0stkn0wledge 9y ago
  If you are writing code, you are doing yourself (and anyone using your code) a disservice if you do not read something on secure coding. There are not a ton of code agnostic resouces, but you may want to start with "Software Security: Building Security In" I would then look for language specific options as well, because programming for security can vary a lot amongst languages. Writing securely for native applications running on a system is much different than writing secure web apps.
• tmaly 9y ago
  Understanding the Four Rules of Simple Design by Cory Haines I like the 4 simple rules, I think he originally got these from Kent Beck. It is easier to keep this system in your mind if it is just a few basic principles. Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers As others also mentioned this. I think this is becoming more important as people transition to new jobs where they have to take on existing software. Having a process to deal with code that lacks documentation and tests is really important.
• timwaagh 9y ago
  Beautiful Code is nice (O'Reilly, various authors). I'd recommend it. It is written in a lot of languages so will help open your eyes to new worlds.
• svec 9y ago
  "Programmers at Work: Interviews With 19 Programmers Who Shaped the Computer Industry" by Susan Lammers. https://www.amazon.com/Programmers-Work-Interviews-Computer-Industry/dp/1556152116 https://www.amazon.com/Programmers-Work-Interviews-Computer-... This book is from 1989, but it's a timeless and fascinating look at the minds of Bill Gates, Andy Hertzfeld (apple/mac), Dan Bricklin (visicalc), and 16 others.
• neves 9y ago
  Any computer themed book of Gerald M. Weinberg is a must read: https://leanpub.com/u/jerryweinberg https://leanpub.com/u/jerryweinberg If at first sight my may think that they are outdated and superficial, but you can't be more wrong.
  • pjmorris 9y ago
    While he'd been successful writing language-specific books, he stopped writing them in the early 70's, because he recognized that the important principles didn't change. Super important thinker about software and the people who make it.
• amadvance 9y ago
  I recognized my experience, and really liked: Software Craftsmanship - The New Imperative, Pete McBreen http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1035377.Software_Craftsmanship http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1035377.Software_Craftsma...
• swanandp 9y ago
  Release It! by Micheal Nygard. Excellent advice and patterns about building robust software.
• mezuzi 9y ago
  Code, the Hidden... is a great read
• fatjonny 9y ago
  I've been thoroughly enjoying "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" by Martin Kleppmann. It primarily deals with the current state of storing data (databases, etc) starting with storing data on one machine and expanding to distributed architectures...but most importantly it goes over the trade-offs between the various approaches. It is at a high level because of the amount of ground it covers, but it contains a ton of references to dig in deeper if you want to know more about a specific topic.
  • silentsea90 9y ago
    +1. Great for getting a lay of the land on distributed systems problems. I haven't ever studied distributed systems formally though, so I wonder how this differs from that.
• solatic 9y ago
  Nobody recommended The Phoenix Project yet by Gene Kim? Unless you have some understanding of your system's architecture, how it's run in production, and why a production environment is Really Different and a Big Freaking Deal, and how operations is supposed to look like, you'll never be an effective programmer, no matter whether you run your own operations in a small start-up or work for a large enterprise with dedicated operations teams.
• stcredzero 9y ago
  Martin Fowler's Refactoring
• m-j-fox 9y ago
  Not exactly language-agnostic, nor about programming per se, nor a book, but [Google Style Guides](https://github.com/google/styleguide https://github.com/google/styleguide) offer a lot of specific, opinionated, practical advice that you can apply immediately. It's like an MLA manual for programmers.
• smcgraw 9y ago
  "Thinking Recursively" by Eric Roberts. Completely changed the way I think about recursive programming and easy to pick up. https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/books/ThinkingRecursively/ https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/books/ThinkingRecurs...
  • jrapdx3 9y ago
    Yes it's a classic and very well written. When I read this more than 25 years ago it was a real eye-opener and made the workings of recursion clear to me. Curiously acquiring an understanding of recursion in programming allows me to "think recursively" in regard to many other matters as well, so important for thinking "outside the box". I'd venture that besides recursion, the other key concepts in programming have been pointers and first-class functions. Getting a grasp on these 3 ideas has been essential to learning.
• cstavish 9y ago
  Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley.
• tomxor 9y ago
  Thinking FORTH (yes it's language agnostic, even though it's about FORTH)
• aHernandezI 9y ago
  I loved cracking the coding interview, even if you want to practice for an interview or not, with this book you can get a friendly reminder of data structures and algorithms, time complexity and related topics (and you can improve your problem-solving skills too). For me at least it was useful for feeling again a great interest in these topics and to love even more my job.
• sateesh 9y ago
  The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll. This book taught me how important it is to keep a log of events. These logs come in very handy when the problem one trying to debug spawns multiple complex systems.
  • hyperdeficit 9y ago
    Seconded. This is also a great read on how to track down a deep problem, going through all of the steps required to figure out where it was coming from. That's on top of it being an entertaining view of early computer networking.
• ninjakeyboard 9y ago
  Domain Driven Design by Evans PoEAA by Fowler (read his blog posts for the sequel that never came into existence such as event sourcing and cqrs as well) Refactoring by Fowler Event Storming by Brandolini
• aaronmu 9y ago
  A couple fun ones that weren't mentioned yet: JavaScript Allongé, the "Six" Edition by Reginald Braithwaite Are Your Lights On? by Gerald M. Weinberg
• Animats 9y ago
  "Fundamental Algorithms", Knuth.
• autoreleasepool 9y ago
  [deleted]
  • kfrzcode 9y ago
    What is 'watch this?'
    • autoreleasepool 9y ago
      Sorry, I accidentally commented on the wrong post somehow. Unfortunately, I can't delete the comment.
• eru 9y ago
  Fred Brook's "The Mythical Man Month".
• masterzachary 9y ago
  * "Clean Code" Robert C. Martin (978-0132350884) * "Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code" Martin Fowler (978-0201485677) * "Computer Systems: A Programmers Perspective" Randal E. Bryant (978-0134092669)
• cakeface 9y ago
  I really liked "Building Microservices" by Sam Newman. It's a good review on current software architecture and software development process in addition to going over microservices. Honestly microservices are a topic in the book but it could just be called "Software Architecture in 2016".
• mempko 9y ago
  The Elements of Programming. They use C++ but it isn't about C++ at all
• deathtrader666 9y ago
  Death March is a good one for understanding how and why projects fail.
• Jeaye 9y ago
  The Reasoned Schemer: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/reasoned-schemer https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/reasoned-schemer Learning more and more about imperative programming, OOP, design patterns, etc is good, but branching out into declarative programming and the functional and logic paradigms will stretch your mind for the better. The great thing, I think, about The Reasoned Schemer is that it tackles a complex topic with almost no prose. The whole book is basically one code example after another, in a Q/A style. "What does this do?" <allow you to think about it> "Here is what it does, and here's why." Rinse and repeat. I think more technical books should try this.
  • vram22 9y ago
    The Reasoned Schemer sounds like it was part of a series, is that right? I remember reading about The Little Schemer and maybe The Seasoned Schemer. Are those all parts of the same series? Haven't read any of them yet, but hope to do so some day. I like reading the classics of the field. Not only because they are classics, but also because they tend be well-written and hence more readable as well (than your average text). But maybe that is a tautology :) - they are classics because they are well-written ... Update: Answering my own question - I saw here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/reasoned-schemer https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/reasoned-schemer that it is part of a series, which includes the books I mentioned above.
• JCzynski 9y ago
  Working Effectively With Unit Tests is quite useful. It's focused on Java but the advice given applies well beyond that.
• cestith 9y ago
  - The Practice of Programming ; Kernighan and Pike - The Advent of the Algorithm ; Berlinski - Engineering a Compiler ; Torczon and Cooper - Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment ; Stevens and Rago - Databases, Types, and the Relational Model ; Date - Code ; Petzold
• type0 9y ago
  The Annotated Turing by C. Petzold
• lamg 9y ago
  "A Discipline of Programming" by Edsger Dijkstra.
• leozhang 9y ago
  Introduction to functional programming 1st edition by Richard Bird
• cyrusfusion 9y ago
  Unix Network Programming, vols 1 & 2, by W. Richard Stevens Yea, I know the code examples are written in C, but he goes into detail about how networks and ipc work.
• OJFord 9y ago
  Sipser's Theory of Computation. It covers automata and languages, computability, and complexity - and is brilliantly written, the proof style in particular: clear 'proof idea's followed by the details that can be easily skipped if you're not interested, or it is clear from the 'idea'.
• fd5773 9y ago
  If you can find a copy, get the 1st Edition of Bertrand Meyer's "Object Oriented Software Construction". (1st ed. is a classic; 2nd ed. is much larger and worse for it, IMO.) If you can, forget about the title and just read it; most of the good stuff in this book is less about objects and much more a fantastic seminar on programming in general.
• maksa 9y ago
  - Pragmatic Programmer, From Journeyman To Master - Code Complete 2nd Ed. - Quality Software Management Vol 1-4, by Gerald M. Weinberg I'd also throw in: Code Reading - The Open Source Perspective
• sAbakumoff 9y ago
  "Practices of an Agile Developer: Working in the Real World" - this book was like the Bible for me when I started my career in IT 10 years ago. I re-read it multiple times and I still stick to the practices described in this book. They are language agnostic, they are pretty clear and easy to follow and they can really improve your skills.
• smyatkin_maxim 9y ago
  Excellent question btw. Language-agnostic books don't get out-dated that fast and I'd give them higher priority. Personally: - Code complete - Pragmatic programmer - Design patterns - Programming pearls - If you're going for hardcore programming: the dragon book, something on modern hardware and something on OS internals.
• gmiller123456 9y ago
  "The Elements of Computing Systems" and the accompanying course Nand2Tetris on Coursera. It's a course that starts with just nand gates, and leads you through the development of higher level logic gates, then an ALU, then a CPU, the an assembler, then a high level language compiler, and finally an operating system. I've seen the "dragon book" mentioned several times, and I think it (and similar books) are good if you really do plan to (re-)invent a real world, large scale, programming language. If you really just want to get a feel for what's going on under the hood, the language presented in Nand2Tetris is specifically designed to have the necessary complexity to cover most of the details, but not so many special cases that you end up "chasing dragons". And the course is modular enough that you can jump right in and just implement the compiler if you want.
• arashThr 9y ago
  I also like to add "Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware" by Andy Hunt It can be considered as a followup of pragmatic programmer. For me the main challenge is to how to stay relevant in days of constant change, and the best answer seems to be constant learning. So, let's learn how to learn! And this is exactly the main topic of this book.
• leandot 9y ago
  A plug but hopefully useful as it is basically the books read by the HN community - http://hackernewsbooks.com http://hackernewsbooks.com