Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What Should Every Programmer Read?
An anonymous reader writes "There's a blog post floating around right now listing articles every programmer should read. I'm curious what articles, books, etc., Slashdot readers would add to this list. Should The Art of Computer Programming, Design Patterns, or Structure and Interpretation
of Computer Programs be on the list? What about The Mythical Man-Month, or similar works that are about concepts relating to programming? Is there any code that every programmer should take a look at? Obviously, the nature of this question precludes articles about the nitty-gritty of particular languages, but I'm sure a lot of people would be interested in those, too. So if you can think of a few articles that every C++ programmer (or Perl, or Haskell, or whatever) should know, post those too."
It's rather out of date but "The Joy of C" was my first programming book and I attest its style to easing me in to the development mindset.
...you don't get to call yourself a "software engineer" or talk about others' software engineering practices.
"My life's work has been to prompt others... and be forgotten." --Cyrano de Bergerac
Dilbert.
I'm gazing across my bookshelf full of O Reilly books, Knuth's series, TCP/IP Illustrated, and others... but the most important books are more mundane:
Godel Escher Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, and Alice in Wonderland
Both of these books encompass the thinking and mindset which will make you a better programmer by planting the seed of logic, states, and recursion, and nourishing the hell out of it. It will massage the pathways to make someone actually want to be a programmer.
The problem with that book is that too many people read it the wrong way. Instead of using it as a language to describe design, they attempt to find ways to force their code into patterns or to add patterns because they think they should use them. The result is worse code than if they had never read it. This is especially true of those who read the book before they've seen enough code to understand design. It should be read, but only at the proper time and in the proper way.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
After a year i go back and realize what a horrible programmer i am. It happens every year. But i'm getting better. I also spend a lot of time reading other people's code. I've found that if you are writing "new" code you haven't already seen in action, you just might wind up killing somone someday.
Nonsense. The Mythical Man-Month is mostly about team-building, project management and a bit about software architecture
In other words the mix of work for a programmer of every company I have been at.
You think you came to write code? Ha Ha! Let me acquaint you with Mr Process.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley