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A Programmer's Bookshelf

Posted by Hemos on from the good-question dept.

An anonymous reader writes "With christmas just round the corner I have been looking for gifts for my geek friends. But what book? I recently found a simple page with one person's bookshelf and explain what's good and what's not. What do you think? Whats on a programmer's bookshelf? (or what should be and is not!)"

4 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. first post by themusicgod1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    goedel escher bach d:

    --
    GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
  2. There are so many options by koltrane · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's hard to be specific when "a programmer" could write in a number of languages. Regardless, just about anything from O'Reilly is well worth the shelf space. I still have my original copy of "The Whole Internet"!

  3. A few must-haves... by Beek · · Score: 5, Informative

    Code Complete by Steve McConnell
    The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and Dave Thomas
    Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler
    The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks

    The are a few off the top of my head that any programmer should read. I'm sure there are a few others. Most things after that are probably specific to certain areas and interests.

  4. My personal favorites... by mackman · · Score: 5, Informative

    Neither of these I would recommend in general, but they are both excellent books if you are dealing with the subject matter they discuss. They are both enjoyable reads and extremely useful.

    Inside the C++ Object Model by Stanley B. Lippman. Lippman is one of the original authors of CFront (along with Stroustrup), the original C++ compiler which worked by translating C++ into C. This book explains how every C++ feature is implmented by the compiler: virtual functions, multiple inheritence, in-memory object layout, etc. If you are working on projects where the overhead of a pointer de-reference or virtual function call may be too much, then this book is a must read. Even if that doesn't describe you, this is still a suprisingly enjoyable read and will almost certainly help you at any job interviews for C++ programming positions.

    Hackers Delight by Henry S. Warren Jr. This deals entirely with efficient bit twiddling. It has chapters on counting the bits set in a word, finding the first set bit, quick integer square root approximations, etc. Unless you're working with embedded systems or otherwise need assembly-level optimizations, this book just serves to obfuscate your code. On the other hand, it's quite a fun challenge to try to figure out the algorithms without reading the explanations.