Countless books have been written to guide and educate us in the realm of programming. But which one stands above all the rest as the most influential of them all? What coding resource book do you consider to be an absolute game-changer or a a timeless gem that has left an indelible mark on the programming world?
Share your thoughts, experiences, and recommendations so we can build out coding libraries!
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Top comments (28)
The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie
Beat me to it.
Clean Code has to be up there
Influencal yes, but good?
open.substack.com/pub/computerenha...
I don’t disagree.
For me it’s probably a toss up between
Pragmatic Programmer
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
Designing Data-Intensive Applications
and
Mythical Man-Month
The Mythical Man-Month is epic
Good choice! I prefer Refactoring to Patterns over Refactoring by Fowler
Don't Make Me Think
~ Steve Krug
Introduction to Algorithmsby Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, Clifford Stein
Maybe not the most influential overall, but for the books that I have on programming, this tops all of them. Amazing diagrams, explanations, and a nice mix between conceptual ideas and mathematical ideas/proofs!
The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth
Art of Computer Programming.
For me it was CSS Zen Garden
Opened my eyes to "separation of concerns"
Some of them has been named here, but "JavaScript: The Good Parts" is one of those that teaches you about how to use a programming language.
Personally I found Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code the most helpful book in my daily programming tasks. Although Test-Driven Development For Embedded C was the one that made me improve the most. Not only in C but in my programming methodology itself
Clean Architecture - Robert C. Martin
For me " let us C "
If you are starting your journey in the field of computer science, this book is epic, it really helped me alot
https://books.google.com.eg/books/about/Let_Us_C.html?id=HrlIEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&gboemv=1&ovdme=1&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
Operating Systems - Design and Implementation
Andrew S. Tanenbaum
It essentially gave us Linux. Although we wouldn't have that without C so maybe second most influential.
Code Complete
The Pragmatic Programmer
Design Patterns
Refactoring to Patterns
Operating Systems - Design and Implementation
Pro .NET Benchmarking