What is the single most influential book every pro

Question

If you could go back in time and tell yourself to read a specific book at the beginning of your career as a developer, which book would it be?

I expect this list to be varied and to cover a wide range of things.

To search: Use the search box in the upper-right corner. To search the answers of the current question, use inquestion:this. For example:

inquestion:this "Code Complete"

Answer 1

Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp by Peter Norvig

I started reading it because I wanted to learn Common Lisp. When I was halfway, I realized this was the greatest book about programming I had read so far.

Answer 2

"The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman.

Excellence in programming demands an investment of mental energy and a dedication to continued learning comparable to the professions of medicine or law. It pays a fraction of what those professions pay, much less the wages paid to the mathematically savvy who head into the finance sector. And wages for constructing code are eroding because it's a profession that is relatively easy for the intelligent and self-disciplined in most economies to enter.

Programming has already eroded to the point of paying less than, say, plumbing. Plumbing can't be "offshored." You don't need to pay $2395 to attend the Professional Plumber's Conference every other year for the privilege of receiving an entirely new set of plumbing technologies that will take you a year to learn.

If you live in North America or Europe, are young, and are smart, programming is not a rational career choice. Businesses that involve programming, absolutely. Study business, know enough about programming to refine your BS detector: brilliant. But dedicating the lion's share of your mental energy to the mastery of libraries, data structures, and algorithms? That only makes sense if programming is something more to you than an economic choice.

If you love programming and for that reason intend to make it your career, then it behooves you to develop a cold-eyed understanding of the forces that are, and will continue, to make it a harder and harder profession in which to make a living. "The World is Flat" won't teach you what to name your variables, but it will immerse you for 6 or 8 hours in economic realities that have already arrived. If you can read it, and not get scared, then go out and buy "Code Complete."

Answer 3

The Python language was very influential to me, I wish I would have read these book years ago. The beauty and simplicity of the Python language really affected how I wrote code in other languages.

Answer 4

While I agree that many of the books above are must-reads (Pragmatic Programmer, Mythical Man-Month, Art of Computer Programming, and SICP come to mind immediately), I'd like to go in a slightly different direction and recommend A Discipline of Programming by Edsger Dijkstra. Even though it's 32 years old, the emphasis on "design for verifiability" is highly relevant (even if "verifiability" means "proof" instead "unit tests").

Answer 5

alt text http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61dECNkdnTL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

C++ How to Program It is good for beginner.This is excellent book that full complete with 1500 pages.

Answer 6

Here's an excellent book that is not as widely applauded, but is full of deep insight: Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game, by Alistair Cockburn.

What's so special about it? Well, clearly everyone has heard the term "Agile", and it seems most are believers these days. Whether you believe or not, though, there are some deep principles behind why the Agile movement exists. This book uncovers and articulates these principles in a precise, scientific way. Some of the principles are (btw, these are my words, not Alistair's):

1. The hardest thing about team software development is getting everyone's brains to have the same understanding. We are building huge, elaborate, complex systems which are invisible in the tangible world. The better you are at getting more peoples' brains to share deeper understanding, the more effective your team will be at software development. This is the underlying reason that pair programming makes sense. Most people dismiss it (and I did too initially), but with this principle in mind I highly recommend that you give it another shot. You wind up with TWO people who deeply understand the subsystem you just built ... there aren't many other ways to get such a deep information transfer so quickly. It is like a Vulcan mind meld.
2. You don't always need words to communicate deep understanding quickly. And a corollary: too many words, and you exceed the listener/reader's capacity, meaning the understanding transfer you're attempting does not happen. Consider that children learn how to speak language by being "immersed" and "absorbing". Not just language either ... he gives the example of some kids playing with trains on the floor. Along comes another kid who has never even SEEN a train before ... but by watching the other kids, he picks up the gist of the game and plays right along. This happens all the time between humans. This along with the corollary about too many words helps you see how misguided it was in the old "waterfall" days to try to write 700 page detailed requirements specifications.

There is so much more in there too. I'll shut up now, but I HIGHLY recommend this book!