Software Development Books

1960s

• Mythical Man Month
  • Latency vs throughput; No silver bullet etc
• LISP Programmers Manual 1.5
  • Data formed of symbolic expressions, referred to as S-expressions

1970s

• Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs
  • Pascal
• Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms
  • More Pascal

1980s

• Peopleware
  • Environment drives culture; Furniture police
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
  • Many well known quotes; Program as data etc
• Programming Pearls
  • Computer Engineering stories including Donald Knuth Vs Doug McIlroy
• The Soul of a New Machine
  • A team of Data General researchers to create a new 32-bit superminicomputer

1990s

• Delphi Component Design
  • Highly technical and still relevant; Best description of Virtual methods etc
• Design patterns elements of reusable object-oriented software
  • For archeological reference only. “This belongs in a museum” - Indiana Jones
• Essential COM
  • Interfaces, binary compatibility.
• Multithreading applications in Win32
  • Concurrency idioms on Windows; Mutexes, Semaphores, Non-Blocking IO.
• Transactional COM+
  • Book on scalability disguised as a COM book
• The BeOS Bible
  • Interviews with Be engineers and founders that provide a fascinating insight into this innovative OS
• The Pragmatic Programmer
  • Development methodologies for the coming Open Source revolution

2000s

• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
  • Martin Fowler digests commerical OOP software patterns in Java and Csharp e.g Active Record that inspired Ruby on Rails
• Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices
  • Awareness of best practices when using Class based OOP languages like Java
• Effective_Java
  • All the Java idioms; The more you know the more you learn.
• Java Concurrency In Practice
  • Highly technical and dense coverage of Java Memory Model
• Java Puzzlers
  • Java quirks
• Release It!
  • Pre “Dev Ops” war stories and applicable solutions
• The Old New Thing
  • Technical archeology in practice. Lessons from the past
• How To Design Programs
  • Everyone should learn how to design programs
• Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided By Tests
  • Forms the basis of begining and maintaining your tests as first class software. Instead of “It’s only a test!”
• SQL for Smarties
  • Some principles and histories of SQL programming

2010s

• Implementing Domain-Driven Design
  • Value Objects
• JavaScript Allongé
  • Javascript functional idioms
• Responsive Web Design
  • Introducing adaptable design for HTML
• Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS
  • Handling CSS language in large scale implementations
• Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby
  • Recent text on how to write object-oriented code
• Building Hypermedia APIs with HTML5 and Node
  • Hypermedia driven application concepts and solutions
• The Manager’s Path
  • How to manage and how to be managed
• Designing Data Intensive Applications
  • Pros and cons of various technologies for processing and storing data.
• The Imposters Handbook
  • Core concepts for self-taught developers
• CSS Secrets
  • Rather than focus on design, CSS Secrets shows you how to solve problems with code
• Mazes for Programmers
  • Code your own mazes in the Ruby programming language
• Hacker’s Delight, Second Edition
  • Bit twiddling hacks reuploaded

2020s

• Grokking Simplicity
  • Adopt ideas from functional programming. These simple ideas can be used in any programming language.
• Svelte and Sapper in Action
  • Framework-less. Imagine web apps with fast browser load times that also offer amazing developer productivity and require less code to create
• Kill It With Fire
  • Engineering Management book - Manage Aging Computer Systems And Future Proof Modern Ones
• Crafting Interpreters
  • Starting from main(), you build a language that features rich syntax, dynamic typing, garbage collection, lexical scope, first-class functions, closures, classes, and inheritance
• Building Secure & Reliable Systems
  • Best Practices for Designing, Implementing and Maintaining Systems
• Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, 2nd Edition
  • The classic guide to how computers work, updated with new chapters and interactive graphics
• Security Engineering — Third Edition
  • Definitive guide to information systems security, see https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/book.html for lecture series