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What Is the Most Influential Programming Book?

Posted by samzenpus on from the best-of-class dept.

First time accepted submitter AlexDomo writes "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? Since it was first posed back in 2008, this question has now become the second most popular question of all time on StackOverflow. The top 5 results are: Code Complete (2nd Edition), The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, The C Programming Language, and Introduction to Algorithms."

4 of 624 comments (clear)

  1. The One Book All Coders Should Read by SpinningAround · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is Fred Brook's "The Mythical Man-Month".

  2. K&R C by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie (popularly known as "K&R") is certainly, objectively (puns intended), and probably demonstrably, the most influential programming book. It was a strong, probably primary, influence on every one of the titles suggested in this story. Indeed, it is something like the "ur-text" of modern programming - the vast majority of all programming, since it was first published in 1978. It has influenced programs, programmers and programming books. The influence dependency tree of programming books revolves around K&R.

    I say this despite (or perhaps as demonstrated by) the K&R block brace style, which I abhor. It saves a line to destroy column coherence. And despite popularizing the unitary "var++" (eg. in for() loops), rather than the semantically more consistent "++var". And a hundred other quirks Kernighan and Ritchie infected into programming (and programming books, and thereby programmers). The persistence of which is just part of the ample proof of K&R's paramount influence.

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  3. Re:Bah! Pretenders! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The only CS book where 99% of the people touting it have never read it!

  4. Re:Bah! Pretenders! by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bullshit. I have a PhD in computer science, and I wouldn't recommend TAOCP to anyone. Sure, it covers the material, but it covers it amazingly badly. Knuth manages to take simple concepts and make them incomprehensible. Read pretty much any textbook on theoretical computer science other than TAOCP and you'll learn a lot more.

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