Software engineer reading list: My favourite books about programming

By Dan Bader — Get free updates of new posts here.

Reading books is one of the best ways to improve your craftsmanship and to become a better software developer. This is a continuously updated list with my favourite programming books, sorted by topic. I link to the ebook version where possible but most books should be available made from dead trees as well.

Architecture & System Design

How to build reliable software that works well.

Release It! by Michael T. Nygard
The Architecture of Open Source Applications by Amy Brown
The Architecture of Open Source Applications, Volume II by Amy Brown
The Performance of Open Source Applications by Tavish Armstrong

Craftsmanship

Books about best practices, code quality and professionalism. Every single one of these books is fantastic and I got so much out of them. If you don’t know which area to focus on first then start here.

Clean Code by Robert C. Martin
Team Geek by Brian W. Fitzpatrick
The Clean Coder by Robert C. Martin
The Passionate Programmer by Chad Fowler
The Zen Programmer by Christian Grobmeier
HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself
Better: A surgeon’s notes on performance by Atul Gawande
Code Complete by Steve McConnell

Programming Languages

Books about specific programming languages that I enjoyed. There’s often free resources available online but sometimes it’s nice to just buy a book that takes you through many aspects of a language. Some of these books are great reads even if you’re not interested in the language specifically, as they teach you important universal concepts.

Haskell

Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! by Miran Lipovača
Parallel and Concurrent Programming in Haskell by Simon Marlow

JavaScript

Effective JavaScript by David Herman
JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford

Python

Writing Idiomatic Python by Jeff Knupp
Effective Python by Bret Slatkin
Python Cookbook, 3rd Ed. by David Beazley and Brian Jones
Two Scoops of Django by Daniel and Audrey Roy Greenfeld
Fluent Python by Luciano Ramalho
Automate the Boring Stuff with Python by Al Sweigart

Scala

Programming in Scala by Martin Odersky

Interviews & Hiring

These books work both ways. If you’re trying to be hired as an engineer or hiring others then you can learn a lot from them.

Elements of Programming Interviews (Python Ed.) by Aziz, Lee and Prakash
Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
Programming Interviews Exposed by John Morgan

Leadership & Managing developers

These are useful even if you’re not in a leadership position. They’ll help you understand your manager better and will make you a more effective communicator.

Managing Humans by Michael Lopp
Leading Snowflakes by Oren Ellenbogen
How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
It’s Not All About Me by Robin Dreeke

CompSci fundamentals, algorithms, and math

This stuff is important. Languages and frameworks come and go but the foundations remain largely static. Re-visit these every once in a while.

The Algorithm Design Manual by Steven S. Skiena
Algorithms by Dasgupta, Papadimitriou, and Vazirani
Introduction to Algorithms by Thomas H. Cormen
Concrete Mathematics by Ronald L. Graham

Postmortems

The best software engineering war stories around. I get inspired by reading about successful or failed software projects that others have worked on. These books let you learn from the experiences and careers of some of the best people in the field.

Coders at Work by Peter Seibel
FoxTales by Kerry Nietz
Masters of Doom by David Kushner
Postmortems from Game Developer by Austin Grossman
Showstopper by G. Pascal Zachary
The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga by Jimmy Maher
The Making of Karateka by Jordan Mechner
The Making of Prince of Persia by Jordan Mechner

Writing

Being able to communicate succinctly in writing is often more important than raw technical ability. Especially if you want to convince others. These books have helped me to structure my thinking and improved my English. Especially if English is your second language like it is for me this is an area you should focus on.

On Writing Well by William Zinsser
Oxford Guide to Plain English by Martin Cutts
Writing for Computer Science by Justin Zobel

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This article was filed under: books, career, craftsmanship, programming, and python.

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