I’ve read a lot of books over my almost thirty year career as a software developer. A lot of books have helped me understand various topics related to building software, everything from books on learning new programming languages to understanding particular architectures to how to manage teams. But if you asked me to pick just three out of all the books I’ve read, the three books I discuss here have had the most profound positive impact on me as a developer.
That said, I reserve the right to amend the list at a future point, not because new books will come out that I think should be in the top three, but because I’ve probably forgotten some books that should make the list. It’s a variation of “what have you done for me lately” … books from 20 or 30 years ago may have slipped my mind. My core memory is not what it used to be.
The three books are in no particular order. I recommend reading them all. I would also like to hear from you (assuming someone reads this) about what your top three books would be, and what you think of my top three.
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert C. Martin
First published in 2008, this book has shaped how I’ve written software ever since I read it back when it came out. I had read other books by Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin (see my next pick in fact), so I was pre-disposed to look favorably on this new publication. Clean Code is a very practical book. It deals with the every day aspects of writing good, clean code. Some readers might feel like it’s almost too basic at points, and be tempted to skip sections. I discourage that. While you might skim quickly in parts, I highly recommend reading every single page.
One of the key takeaways from this book is that you are writing code not for yourself, but for the developers that come after you. How you name your classes, your variables, your methods, how you organize those methods within a source file, these all matter, not so much for you (though if you come back to your code months or years later it will help you as well) but for those who have to maintain and enhance the software when you’ve moved on.
One related aspect of this is that the software is the documentation. Anyone who has written software and been involved in building production code over time knows that any software documentation --- whether internal design documents or public user-facing documentation --- is never going to be 100% accurate about how the software really works as that software evolves over time. The only real 100% accurate source of truth about how the software actually works is the software code itself.
And the easier it is to read the code, the easier it is to understand what it’s doing. A corollary to that, described in the book, is that comments in the code imply the code itself is not readable. Comments generally should not be required if you’ve named and organized your code properly. And comments are like any other non-code documentation … it can get out of sync with the actual code just like design documents and user manuals.
Bottom line --- if you write software, read this book.
Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices by Robert C. Martin
My next recommendation is also by “Uncle Bob”.
Pretty much read anything by Robert C. Martin and you can’t go wrong.
This book covers a lot of territory. Under one cover you have a well stated discussion of agile development combined with software design patterns and best practices. It’s a great one stop shop. You could read other books on agile methods but you won’t get anything about design patterns. Or you could read books about design patterns and principles but not get anything on agile. Sometimes when you get a book that covers a broad set of topics, it’s sort of a “jack of all trades, master of none” issue. Not in this case.
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Gamma et al
I actually considered having all three of my selections be “Uncle Bob” books. But I think Design Patterns, a bona fide classic that should be read and understood by everyone and anyone writing software. You don’t have to memorize it, but you have to read an understand it. Developers are often using the patterns described in this classic without even realizing it, which is a shame.
The patterns described in this book --- factory, adapter, observer, strategy, and the list goes on --- these are the fundamental building blocks of software construction. Pretty much everything else is built on this foundation. Without a solid foundation, you’re building your software on sand.
Conclusion
So there you have it, my top three picks. As always when someone makes a list like this, there are going to be a lot of differing opinions. There are many more books I recommend. Several quickly jump to mind … Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler, Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change by Kent Beck, and if you’re a Unix geek like me, both The Magic Garden Explained: The Internals of Unix System V Release 4 : An Open Systems Design by James Cox and Berny Goodheart and Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System by Marshall Kirk McKusick et al. (or 4.2 BSD or 4.3 BSD, depending on your era)
A not-so-amusing aside, someone stole my copy of the 4.2 BSD book off my desk at work at my first job at Amdahl Corp; is nothing sacred?
Fundamentally though, if you could only buy three books to help you be a better software programmer every single day, I think these three will get you quite far.