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Ask Slashdot: What Should Every Programmer Read?

Posted by Soulskill on from the green-eggs-and-dereferenced-pointers dept.

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."

6 of 352 comments (clear)

  1. The story of Mel by quietwalker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For example, here; http://www.catb.org/jargon/htm...

  2. Books to read by Dionysus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Clean Code by Robert C. Martin, Working Effectively with legacy code by Michael C. Feathers, Refactoring by Fowler, Design Patterns by the gang of four. If you are a C++ programmer, anything by Sutter or Meyers.

    --
    Je ne parle pas francais.
  3. Re:If you haven't read The Myythical Man-Month... by gweihir · · Score: 5, Informative

    Nonsense. The Mythical Man-Month is mostly about team-building, project management and a bit about software architecture. It has almost no software engineering content. Sure, it is a highly valuable source, but not a software-engineering one.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  4. Strunk & White: The Elements of Style by RandCraw · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The best preparation for becoming a good programmer (or scientist or engineer) is to learn how to organize your thoughts and then address only what is necessary and sufficient to accomplish a given task.

    I know no book that teaches clarity of thought better than Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style". Clear writing and great coding share a common wellspring.

  5. How about reading your code? by NemoinSpace · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. In other words... by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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