A stackoverflow post asks readers, “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?” Here’s the current list of the 10 most influential books for programmers:
- Code Complete by Steve McConnell (2004).
- The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas (1999).
- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (2nd Edition, 1996) by Harold Abelson, Gerald Sussman, and Julie Sussman.
- The C Programming Language (2nd Edition, 1988) by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Richie.
- Introduction to Algorithms by Thomas Cormen, Charles Leiserson, Ronald Rivest, and Clifford Stein (2009).
- Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, John Brant, and William Opdyke (1999).
- Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides (1994).
- The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick Brooks (1995).
- The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms (3rd Edition, 1997) by Donald Knuth.
- Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools (2nd Edition, 2006) by Alfred Aho, Monica Lam, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey Ullman.
