I set a goal for myself after graduating that I would read the “top” software and computer science books. I put that in quotes because I label them as “top” books through a bit of crowdsourcing of articles and not from some official ranking. I ended up with a list of 18 books. To anyone who wants to increase the amount of reading they do, I recommend Goodreads to track your reading and a Kindle.

My Reading List

  • The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers
  • The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
  • Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
  • Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
  • The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
  • Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming
  • Soft Skills: The Software Developer’s Life Manual
  • Working Effectively with Legacy Code
  • Clean Code
  • Code Complete
  • Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
  • Introduction to Algorithms
  • Structure and Interpretations of Computer Programs
  • The Art of Computer Programming
  • Head First Design Patterns
  • Cracking the Coding Interview
  • CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
  • Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability