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1. Novice
Novice programmers knows how to program but has yet to build something substantial, like taking an idea to a finished and released application. If you are a beginner start by reading this article.
Practice is essential to get good at programming. This programming book contains no solutions, is language agnostic, and will take you from small programs that display “hello, {name}” in a terminal to complete applications that utilize network, persistence, and UI, all without ever overwhelming you. It does this by introducing new concepts and challenges gradually for each exercise.
Explaining something to someone shows a great understanding of the subject matter. Why? Because you will have to be sure you have no assumptions and only facts. Doing this for programming and distributed systems is no easy task, but this programming book does it excellently, and I’m sure this will prove most useful to any developer.
Further reading:
Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future
The Ingenious Ideas That Drive Today's Computers
John MacCormick
How come Google's search engine can be so fast, or that a computer can recognize your handwriting? This programming book explains how computers utilize algorithms to accomplish tasks we today take for gratned.
Why artificial intelligence keeps making epic mistakes (and why the AI bubble will burst)
Emmanuel Maggiori
AI is tremendously valuable, but it has been the victim of overhype for as long as it has existed. It will not save mankind, and it will probably neither be its doom. So, what is AI good for, and what can we expect from it?
The Command-Line Interface (CLI) can initially be intimidating. This short little book will show you how to navigate the filesystem and list, create, move, and remove files. The CLI will be an invaluable tool throughout your career as a software developer.
Further reading:
Really Friendly Git Intro
Learn the basics of Git, the version control system for programming
Tracy Osborn
Version Control Systems (VCS) are handy tools that many programmers take for granted. VCS can make collaboration manageable and help you undo mistakes easily. Getting comfortable with [git](https://git-scm.com) (the most popular VCS) is essential for any developer. Without it, you will likely make a mess and have no easy way to find your way back to when everything was less messy.
Harness the Combinatoric Power of Command-Line Tools and Utilities
Brian P. Hogan
Working with files, text, and networks is common for a developer, and the Command-Line Interface (CLI) can likely automate most of the tediousness of these tasks pretty quickly.
Being proficient with the CLI is the most cross-platform skill you can learn and will most likely always be helpful and outlive any programming language and environment.
Vim is that mysterious thing you sometimes accidentally open when you want to edit files in the terminal. I jumped on the Vim train pretty late, but the more I use it, the more I like it, and the tool has stood the test of time. So don't be like me and disregard Vim because getting started is scary.
Apprenticeship is about learning and getting comfortable with the basics. As an apprentice, you should focus on taking control of your education and seek ways to improve.
We all struggle with the same issues in our journey to mastery, especially early in our careers when we are apprentices. This programming book contains common problems for developers and discusses how to go past them. Knowing this early in your career will give an immense advantage to those who don’t. I’m sure the advice given here will be helpful indefinitely throughout your career as a software developer.
Further reading:
The Clean Coder
A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers
Robert C. Martin
Learn form someone who has made many misstakes instead of making them yourself on what makes a programmer professional and how can we earn trust.
Test code is essential for a healthy software project. If you have no tests, you can’t refactor your code safely or avoid regression effortlessly.
Poorly written tests can become a burden instead of an advantage if one is not careful. Writing good tests is a skill like any other, and this is a great resource to learn how to improve your test writing skills.
An Illustrated Guide for Programmers and Other Curious People
Aditya Bhargava
Understanding algorithms is understanding how to decompose problems and using the right tools for the job. For example, being good at memorizing sorting algorithms will bring you nowhere, but understanding how and why they work will always be helpful and make you a better problem solver. This programming book is an easy and friendly introduction to algorithms with playful illustrations that make it easy to learn algorithms and data structures.
Further reading:
The Golden Ticket
P, NP, and the Search for the Impossible
Lance Fortnow
Can all problems be solved within a reasonable amount of time? What would the world look like if that were true? Read this book and discover why some problems are hard to calculate.
So much about programming is about problem-solving. We mostly solve these problems by writing code. Programming Pearls is a classic software engineering book that discusses the topic of problem-solving in a fun and easy-to-follow way.
Functional Programming is growing in popularity, and it’s a paradigm with a lot to teach about how to design a system. This book covers how to minimize mutability and separate concerns, and the last chapter briefly introduces reactive programming and the onion architecture.
Thinking like a functional programmer can help you write simpler code and reduce system complexity.
Further reading:
An Introduction to Functional Programming
Through Lambda Calculus
Greg Michaelson
Lambda calculus is a tiny mathematical programming language that is the origin of *functional programming*. For people who want to understand *functional programming*, there are few better books.
The Little Schemer is the best introduction to how to solve problems with recursion I've read, and it also teaches a lot about computation and functional programming.
The author uses a Socratic writing style giving this a feeling like he is talking directly to you.
The fundamentals of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) are easy to overlook. Don’t do that; there is plenty to learn from OOP. There are many misconceptions about OOP; it can be an excellent tool for designing maintainable applications if appropriately used.
Further reading:
Elagant Objects Vol. 1
Yegor Bugayenko
There are a lot of misunderstandings about what *Object-Oriented Programming* (*OOP*) is and what are good *OOP* practices. Learning to be good at *OOP* can be one the most valuable things you know, as it is so common in the industry.
Many of the recommendations in this book will seem extreme to some practitioners of *OOP*, but before disregarding them, try them, and maybe you will find that these crazy ideas are not that crazy.
The continuation of the controverial first book with some more ideas on how to be more object-oriented and some revisits of the first book with more depth.
Designing a system with **Object-Oriented programming (OOP)** requires knowledge if you don't want it to become a [big ball of mud](http://www.laputan.org/mud/mud.html#BigBallOfMud). This programming book teaches you to design classes with a single responsibility and compose them with well-defined interfaces that send messages to each other.
You will always need to learn new things that will never stop. Understanding how we think and learn will make your journey as a developer more manageable. Knowing how to optimize your brain for learning is well invested and will payoff immensely through the years.
3. Journeyman
A journeyman has a solid foundation of the basics and can stand on one’s own two feet. Now it’s time to broaden one’s skills. It’s time to leave the comfort zone and explore other ways to do things and new perspectives.
Agile development isn’t scrum or any other process for that matter. Instead, it’s a collection of values and principles guiding your team and organization to work better.
This programming book discusses the first 20 years of agile development, what went wrong, and what worked, giving concrete examples and advice on what practices you and your team can adopt to become more agile.
Further reading:
Agile Testing Condensed
A Brief Introduction
Janet Gregory & Lisa Crispin
Why does usability matter, and how do I achieve it? You don't need to be an expert on the subject (but having access to one helps) to make a usable application. This book will give you tools to improve your application for its users.
Agile is a diluted term caused by years of misunderstandings. Uncertainty leads to confusion for people in the industry. Taking a look at where agile started and where it ended up 20 years later is illuminating.
Reliable Software Releases Through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation
Jez Humble & David Farley
Getting software in the hand of users is fast and often is essential for an agile team because agile is all about small feedback loops. Achieving this is no easy task as it requires a lot of technical excellence from the team.
XP came before the [agile manifesto](http://agilemanifesto.org) and hugely influenced it. The name comes from taking good practices and taking them to an extreme. Reviewing code is good, and an extreme variation of that would be pair-programming.
Adopting XP practices can help your team. Be wary of trying too much too early and giving up before giving it a fair chance.
Mob programming is the most agile practice I've tried. The authors of this book have shared their experiences and discoveries with you so you can more easily get started.
User stories are where the developer and customer decide what to build. For example, they should communicate value to the end-user so the customer can prioritize and help the developer discover a solution.
It's easy to get lost in all the jargon when gathering, writing, and planning stories. However, the author does an excellent job describing common problems and their solution.
There are bad and good coding habits. This programming book documents many and gives them context. Understanding what makes code difficult to read and change will help keep the codebase maintainable.
Everyone won’t always agree with everything a programming book states, which is fine. But be careful to jump to conclusions without some reflections. You can read more about that in my article When programming books are wrong.
The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
Charles Petzold
Code is what you as a developer writes to solve problems for users, but what is code, and why does it work? This programming book explores the origins of code and takes you on a computer-building journey starting from logic and gates.
Further reading:
The C Programming Language
Brian W. Kernighan & Ritchie Dennis
C is a tremendously important programming language that enabled operating systems to be written without an assembly language, making them more portable than ever (look at Unix and Linux). C will teach you about memory management and be a precursor to understanding how operating systems and compilers work (many are programmed in C).
The right tool for the right problem is the name of the game. For smaller projects, the choice of databases has little impact. In distributed systems, what database you use can make a huge difference in response times.
Further reading:
The Design of Everyday Things
Don Norman
As a developer you are building products even though you might not be As a software developer, you are building products. Even though you might not be responsible for how a UI looks, it's essential to understand what makes a great product. Lessons learned in the book can also be applied to your code.
Building Extensible and Maintainable Object-Oriented Software
Eric Freeman & Elisabeth Robson
A gentle but thorough introduction to design patterns.
Design patterns describe a problem and a general solution that can be applied in many variations depending on your context. Pattern familiarity can significantly enhance your ability to design modular and decoupled code.
Further reading:
Design Patterns
Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides
This programming book is considered a classic for good reasons. It's a great book, and understanding it will significantly help you solve problems and understands other people's code.
It contains a log of diagrams that can take time to get used to, and the examples are in C++.
Dependency Injection is a simple concept but provokes many questions, like where should we instantiate dependencies, when should they be injected, and do we inject everything?
This programming book shows you how to avoid using singletons or other global states for dependencies and achieve cross-cutting concerns features like logging, validation, etc., without ending up with spaghetti code.
Knowing your way around SQL and databases is vital for most projects. This fun introduction to designing and using databases will not make you a database guru, but it will give you enough to get stuff done and prepare you for other database books if you wish to learn more.
Further reading:
The Practical SQL Handbook
Using SQL Variants
Judith S Bowman
Databases are everywhere, and as a developer, you will likely need to interact with one or even design one. Unfortunately, designing databases and writing efficient queries is not trivial and easy to get wrong. So, being proficient with databases is a vital skill to be a well-rounded developer today.
A Guide to Modern Databases and the NoSQL Movement
Eric Redmond and Jim R. Wilson
The right tool for the right problem is the name of the game. For smaller projects, the choice of databases has little impact. In distributed systems, what database you use can make a huge difference in response times.
This programming book will define and give you the recipe to be a pragmatic programmer. So don’t expect to be one just because you read it once. Instead, you need to follow their advice and take it to heart without
being dogmatic.
I’m sure your definition of a pragmatic programmer will change after you have read this programming book, and it will likely change again after reading it another time a few years down the road.
Further reading:
97 Things Every Programmer Should Know
Collective Wisdom from the Experts
Kevlin Henney
Kevlin Henney has done a remarkable job collecting 97 tips from a broad range of developers. This book is bound to expand your perspective on programming. I'm confident that some tips in this book will make you think differently about programming.
Refactor isn’t rewriting as much as it’s evolving the code in small steps to improve the code.
Since we seldom get something right the first time and our code will need to change (That’s why we call it software), refactoring is something we need to do as new requirements come.
Being good at refactoring and knowing how and when to do it can make it or break it for the quality of your code.
This book introduces a vocabulary for code smells and refactorings that will help your team talk about code and how to change it.
Further reading:
Refactoring To Patterns
Joshua Kerievsky
Design patterns solve problems, so they should not be applied if there is none. Therefore design patterns should be a product of refactorings. Never start with a design pattern but rather refactor towards or to them, and sometimes even away from them.
There are many interpretations of legacy code. This book defines legacy code as code without unit tests.
Legacy code is in all projects if large enough, and there are many good reasons for it. Working with legacy code is tiring and makes long lead times for new features. It can also be a breeding ground for regression.
A Pragmatic Guide to Learning Programming Languages
Bruce A. Tate
This programming book introduces seven paradigms through seven programming languages. The ideas and concepts from these languages have influenced many modern languages today. Without Haskell there would surely be no Swift, Kotlin, or Elm.
Exposing oneself to new ideas and concepts is helpful for perspective and problem-solving. For example, Prolog and Erlang might seem like strange programming languages with little application, but understanding them might be more beneficial than you first might think.
You might want to revisit Exercies for Programmers and try to work through it with one of these languages.
Further reading:
Getting Clojure
Build Your Functional Skills One Idea at a Time
Russ Olsen
The simplicity and consistency of the language makes Clojure a delight to work with and learning more about Clojure is a good investment.
Diving deeper into Haskell and learning how you can solve problems with its features and limitations will indeed challenge your thinking about data structures and functions. I'm confident that knowing how to build programs with Haskell will make you a better programmer.
Functional programming is more common today than ever.
Immutable data and higher-level functions are powerful concepts applicable in all programming languages. Some languages make adoption more natural than others, but the ideas are still valuable.
Test-Driven Development (TDD) is the idea of writing test code before production code and letting that drive your design. TDD is one of the most rewarding technics one can learn. Learning TDD is tough and will take time and I can’t think of a better place to start than with this book.
Further reading:
Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests
Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce
Testing and TDD (test-driven development) are hard skills to learn. A common complaint is that TDD only works for lesser problems and not for real applications, A ridiculous idea!
This book takes you on a TDD journey, building an application tat goes beyond toy examples.
This book is long and, if hit when thrown, you might end up in the hospital. It is also its completeness that makes it great.
Test code needs design as much as production code. Rules and principles about clean code still apply to tests.
Test code can be problematic if not maintained. Recognizing test smells and knowing what patterns to use is vital for the health of the test suite.
A master should display excellent problem-solving skills while producing well-written code, showing communication capabilities and deep knowledge of their craft. More importantly, a master helps her peers and wants others to surpass them. You will find these books more demanding, but they will also be more rewarding.
The road to mastery is never over. Like the black belt in martial arts, this is the beginning of something, not the end. So continue reading and learning! You can find more books I recommend on the more page.
A Craftsman's Guide to Software Structure and Design
Robert C. Martin
What is a good way to structure your project?
Code can be difficult to get right on the function level, but getting a whole project to be cohesive and support change is no easy task. You might never have to switch UI framework or database provider, but separating these concerns can make a massive difference in maintainability.
Programming languages compile to machine code for the computer to run. Deconstructing how we build programming languages will give an understanding that can make learning new programming languages trivial.
The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems
Martin Kleppmann
Distributed systems backed by databases are extremely common. Designing a distributed system is nontrivial because, by nature, it involves many components and external interfaces that bind you to early mistakes.
Domain-Driven Design (DDD) is a big topic, and this is the book that started it. It explains everything you need to know to make a difference in how your business communicates and your team writes code.
Further reading:
Domain Modeling Made Functional
Tackle Software Complexity with Domain-Driven Design and F#
Scott Wlaschin
Domain modeling is about turning the shared domain model of the product into code. But, of course, any programming language can accomplish this, and functional programming is pretty good at it.
As the original design pattern book, it defines a vocabulary for problems and solutions. Knowing a lot of them gives you the flexibility to explore and talk about solutions at a higher level of abstraction.
If you are getting paid to write software, you are probably working on an enterprise application. It's tricky to get all the parts right, like database, network, and user interface code. This book will help you make the right trade-offs for the right reasons.
Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau & Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau
Don’t neglect how operating systems work, as they are the mediator of all software running on the machine. Understanding operating systems gives you an insight into the interplay of devices and software that can be hard to grasp otherwise.
Sometimes we treat people like machines. In some occupations, this can work. In software projects, it creates problems that can be hard to fix.
People are what make software projects succeed or fail. Few problems are technical. Having a well-functioned team is more important than a modern tech stack.
Further reading:
The Mythical Man-Month
Essays on Software Engineering
Frederick Brooks Jr.
Software is hard to build. The problems we face today in software projects are as old as software engineering. This book makes that abundantly clear. Written in 1975 about a software project at IBM in the 60s, this book feels as relevant today as it probably was back then.
Knowing and understanding common software project problems helps us mitigate them or at least know what to expect.
"Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" - Brooks's law.
