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What's the Most Influential Coding Book Ever?

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)

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rrampage profile image
Raunak Ramakrishnan

The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie

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thumbone profile image
Bernd Wechner

Beat me to it.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Clean Code has to be up there

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startin profile image
Martin Stohanzl • Edited

Influencal yes, but good?
open.substack.com/pub/computerenha...

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

I don’t disagree.

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ganonbit profile image
Andrew Reese
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Bruce MacNaughton

The Mythical Man-Month is epic

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Libor Pansky

Good choice! I prefer Refactoring to Patterns over Refactoring by Fowler

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Oscar

Introduction to Algorithms
by 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!

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d7460n profile image
D7460N

Don't Make Me Think
~ Steve Krug

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Frederico Americano Linhares

The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth

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Philip John Basile

For me it was CSS Zen Garden

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D7460N

Opened my eyes to "separation of concerns"

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Billy Shin

Art of Computer Programming.

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Steve Quezadas

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Ulises Serrano

Clean Architecture - Robert C. Martin