If we come across someone with a remarkable mind, we should find out what books he likes to read. A book may define a person’s personality and intelligence. You should be an excellent reader if you’re a coder since reading broadens the intellect, which is your weapon. It must be trained on a daily basis. You must first identify the problem before you can discover a solution. The most essential thing you can do as a developer or issue solution is to read and grasp the problems. A person with weak reading and comprehension abilities needs more time to grasp difficulties before they can be solved.
The following are the top 10 books that every programmer should read. These books will teach you not just the syntax and semantics of programming languages, but also the most fundamental lesson for a coder: how to think, organize, and solve issues. These books will not only help you grasp a programming language like C++, Java, or Python, but they will also help you improve as a programmer.
1. Robert C. Martin’s Clean Code
This is one of the best beginner’s books, and it will teach you all the tricks and patterns of writing good, clean code. Every piece of code that executes is not a clean piece of code. Most beginner programmers make this mistake because they are only concerned with solving the problem and thus overlook these important aspects of writing clean and perfect professional code. Clean code should be easily readable and structured, allowing it to be reused and debugged.
Ideas that were presented were:
- What is the proper way to name a variable?
- What is the best way to write a better method?
- How can you improve the structure of your code?
- What is the odor of the code?
- Why is a different approach preferable to this one?
2. Frederick Brooks’ The Mythical Man-Month
This book is regarded as a Bible by many software developers around the world. This book will assist you in developing a proper understanding of software development, estimates, project management, and software development issues. The book’s main theme is “Brooks’ Law,” which states that “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”
Ideas that were presented were:
- The mythical man-month: man-months are a myth for measuring useful work.
- Software Engineering’s Essence and Mistakes,
- When working on a second system, it’s important to remember not to over-engineer it.
- Any attempt to correct an error can result in a slew of new ones.
3. Your Path to Mastery as a Pragmatic Programmer
Andrew Hunt and David Thomas wrote this book about programming and software engineering. This book is unique in that it teaches us in a practical manner with a collection of tips to improve the programming and development process rather than in a theoretical manner. This book will teach you how to become a pragmatic programmer, an early adopter, and a jack-of-all-trades by encouraging inquisitiveness and critical thinking, realism, and a jack-of-all-trades attitude. The book also includes development methodologies, caveats, analogies, and short stories, such as the broken windows theory, the stone soup story, and the boiling frog story.
The following ideas were presented:
- Using a variety of analogies and short stories, present development methodologies and processes. For instance, consider the stone soup or the story of the boiling frog.
- Many terms were coined to describe concepts that became popular as a result of this book, such as code katas.
- More methods for creating and preserving highly adjustable codes are being used.
- Time and expense estimates can benefit from these suggestions.
- Introduces you to work methods you may not have considered before.
4. Steve McConnell’s Code Complete (2nd Edition)
You should read this book at least once if you want to be a great software engineer. For more than a decade, this book has provided the most useful practical programming guides, assisting developers in writing better software. This book is a rare combination of classic and fully updated leading-edge coding concepts and examples. You can easily understand the art and science of software development if you understand these key concepts.
Represented Concepts:
- Layout, style, character, themes, and self-documentation are examples of software craftsmanship.
- Software development includes coding, debugging, integration, and testing.
- Other crucial aspects of software development include requirements and documentation.
- The methods for writing high-quality code, as well as code improvements and system considerations.
5. Computer Programming Techniques
Professor Donald Knuth, a well-known computer scientist, has written yet another classic book. Many of the world’s top programmers have praised this book for its unique combination of mathematical precision and hilarious humour throughout the chapters. In 1974, Knuth received the Turing Award for his major contributions to the analysis of algorithms through his well-known book series “art of computer programming.”
The book starts with basic programming concepts and techniques, then moves on to various programming algorithms and their analysis, with a special emphasis on information representation inside a computer (information structure).
Ideas that were presented were:
- How to effectively deal with the structural relationships between data elements
- How to use the fundamental concepts of fundamental Algorithms to solve problems effectively
- Algorithms that are semi-numerical and combinatorial
- Optimal Sorting or Minimum-Comparison Sorting
6. Pearl Programming
This book differs slightly from the other classics on the list, but it is one of the most influential books in teaching people how to think like programmers. Practical problems and a variety of effective and efficient solutions are presented for each concept. This is enjoyable to read because of the excellent writing style.
This is not your typical book for learning new programming concepts, but it is the best practical programming book to practice with and follow along with. Because the main goal of this book is to help you become a better problem solver, it tests your understanding of core concepts in memory, CPU, and algorithms and gradually increases the difficulty rather than giving you the answer right away. This book is the best place to practice data structure and algorithm problems, such as searching, sorting, heaps, and so on. Jon Bentley has created a masterpiece that fully justifies the name “Programming Pearls.”
7. Charles Petzold is the seventh code.
This book provides an excellent introduction to “The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software” for anyone who has ever wondered about the magic and secret inner life of computers, as well as how these complex systems and other smart machines work.
Due to the level of abstractions used nowadays, low-level details are masked, but if you read this book, you will be able to understand those amazing older technologies like Morse code, Braille, and Boolean logic, as well as vacuum tubes, transistors, and integrated circuits. To reach a scalable solution for a very complicated bug, you may need to go deeper into the dead ends of the electronic, binary computer with a von Neumann architecture. Many recent developments topics, such as floating-point arithmetic, operating systems, packet-based communication protocols, and graphical user interfaces, were also easily explained.
8. Algorithms: A Beginner’s Guide
By Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, and Clifford Stein, this is the single most famous book widely used as a textbook for understanding and using an algorithm. This book is frequently cited as a reference for algorithms in published papers, with over 10,000 citations documented on CiteSeerX. During its first 20 years, the book was also a best-selling programming book, with half a million copies sold.
Each chapter in this book delves into a wide range of algorithms, their design techniques, and application areas in detail. Programming examples are written in pseudo code with rigor and comprehensiveness, rather than using a specific programming language.
9. Refactoring is a technique for improving the design of existing code.
Martin Fowler’s book is a must-have for software developers because it provides start-to-finish strategies for working more effectively with large software and improving the design of existing code.
Refactoring is the process of rewriting code to improve readability, testability, and maintainability without changing the functionality. If you want to improve and maintain the quality of your code, this book is for you. It contains step-by-step instructions for implementing more than 40 proven refactorings, as well as examples of when and why to use each refactoring. The majority of the examples in the second edition of this classic book switched from Java to JavaScript, but the concepts can be applied to any Object-oriented programming language. The book is well-written and includes samples, examples, diagrams, step-by-step instructions, side-notes, and commentary, as well as everything else you’d need to fully comprehend a refactoring method.
10. Design Patterns: Reusable Object-Oriented Software Elements
This is widely regarded as one of the best software development books ever written, covering a wide range of design patterns in great detail. It was written by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides, with a foreword by Grady Booch, and was influential in the field of software engineering.
This is a must-read for any aspiring complex system architect or designer. You will almost certainly be required to read this book in order to avoid and deal with common industry issues. This book contains a detailed description of many different design patterns and is regarded as a valuable resource for object-oriented design theory and practice developed over time to aid software engineers.
The authors discuss the tension between inheritance and encapsulation, parameterized types, supporting multiple look-and-feel standards, enhancing the user interface, and supporting multiple window systems, among other topics.
