List of programming book lists
(originally made back in 2009)
Top 100 Best Software Engineering Books, by stats
Programming Books (Books Every Programmer Should_Read)
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/62dme/ask_programmingreddit_mustread_programming_books
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1071869&cid=26215379
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1071869&cid=26217339
This is one of those questions that's going to keep being asked... Perhaps one day I'm going churn out the first post to end all first posts on this.
Link summary from last time:
General comments
- A few people have volumes of Knuth's Art of Programming on their shelves (but it's harder to find people who have read all of them).
- One of the consultants who taught at my University said that the Mythical Man Month and Peopleware were good. I've read these too and can also recommended them (although they are more about managing programmers rather than programming per se). The consultant also recommended Design Patterns (although he said not to read the book cover to cover but rather to just be aware of them so you could refer to them later).
- I've heard the "Dragon Book" (Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools I think is the 2nd edition) being talked of favourably.
- Many people seem to recommend reading Godel, Escher, Bach (I'd say it's about mathematical thinking)...
I've noticed which book answers tend to fall a bunch of categories:
- Books that talk about software engineering/management/teams.
- Books that talk about programming languages.
- Books that talk about Computer Science.
- Books that improve your mathematical thinking.
- Books that programmers like but aren't programming/maths at all.
If you're going to ask someone "which book?" try limit the categories they should give you an answer for...