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Eight More Essential Books for Developers

Thanks to the mention at Javalobby, I had a great response with tons of feedback to my post on essential books for Java developers. From reading the comments there and at the Javalobby thread, here are some more “must-haves”. Also, I have a crazy long wishlist of nerdy books at Amazon that I’m trying to get through. Only about 80 more to go!

• I’ve heard a lot of good things about McConnel’s book, just haven’t pulled the trigger at Amazon yet. He has an interview over at IT Conversations where he talks about the book and his approach to development and his thoughts on agile, among other things.
• Another one that has been on my wishlist for quite awhile, just haven’t gotten around to getting it yet. Domain Driven Design always comes very highly recommended - here’s one glowing review.
• The Head First books are great, using humor and lots of graphics and weird stock photos to get you to learn. The perfect followup to the GoF book, especially if you can’t stay awake with the GoF’s dry prose.
• If you get no other books on usability or web interface design, get this one. Don’t believe me? Go read a sample chapter. Read some reviews. Then go create better designs.
• Fowler has a ton of great books, but I include Patterns of Enterprise Architecture because the patterns are general enough that they make sense in other languages and in different frameworks. The ActiveRecord pattern that Rails uses comes from here, for example. Lots of discussion regarding different ways to handle persistence, so if you are digging into ORM this would be a good book to see some of the different approaches. (Yes, Refactoring is a classic as well…its just a bit dated now and could use an update. Still recommended if you don’t know jack about refactoring.)
• Alright, here is the core Java book if you really want to get into the guts of core Java. Its from the source and definitely not for beginners, and covers all the 5.0 features. If you are just getting started, pick up Head First Java (2nd Edition) first.
• The Mythical Man Month is a classic. Developing software is hard, and developing massive software systems is incredibly hard. The average project success (ie on budget, on time, all features) rate is estimated to be around 16%. The reasons for the ridiculous failure rate was the same thirty years ago as it is today, so don’t let the age of this book scare you.
• Finally, I have to include this non-dead-trees resource. The WikiWikiWeb, aka c2, aka the Portland Patterns Repository. This is the first wiki started by Ward Cunningham. When you find yourself wasting time on slashdot or digg, go to c2 and pick some topic you don’t much about. Read, learn, prosper. One of the best general software development resources on the web.

Also, Steve Yegge (former Amazon, now at Google) has two great reading lists for your perusal: Ten Great Books and Ten Challenges.

I think this plus the original five makes a pretty good foundation for a developer’s library. What else did I miss? Other reading lists you’ve found helpful?

[…] Update: Welcome, Javalobby readers! You might be interested in the followup to this post. Thanks for the great feedback and suggestions. […]

Java Development with Ant has been pretty crucial to me.

I agree with the comments about the GoF book being a dry read. In fact, I know it’s the bible of Design Patterns, but I found it utterly useless. At our company, it’s just a status symbol for posers.

UML Distilled is a fabulous book as well.

The only Head First book I have ever read is Head First EJB. I just loved the way they get across.

“Don’t Make Me Think” is a great book that is easy to read. Eventhough I am not a designer, I continue to find myself having to do design. This book helps me to make sure that I am at least creating something usable even if it is ugly:).