Good books about programming?

[Hi P]

Context, I'm currently working to pay school, and I have around 3 hours of free time (going to work / home, lunch time, etc), we are not allowed to use the phone at work so reading a PDF is out of the equation.

 

I'm not looking to buy a book for an specific programming language, but rather a "general" programming book (honestly I don't even know if such thing exists), about good coding practices or something like that, anything useful.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thank you very much

[reniat]

The 2 i've read recently that I highly recommend would be Code Complete (it's pretty long but VERY good, if a bit old), and The Pragmatic Programmer. If you are interested in less technical stuff and more UI/UX stuff, Don't make me think! is pretty good.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Dustin Boswell's The Art of Readable Code (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064CZ1XE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

 

While it is Windows focused and has sections you can gloss over because it's mostly technical how-tos, I recommend Raymon Chen's The Old New Thing, since he has a lot of stories that can be applied to the profession in general.

[Aimi]

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is a fun read.

[JacobFW]

Actually recommended this book in another thread a few days ago, but Algorithms in C++ by Robert Sedgewick is one of those books I think every programmer should have, and that I absolutely despise my teachers for not telling us about.  I see it in used books stores all the time for <$5.

 

While I do recognize their value in certain situations, my personal philosophy is to avoid any "programming" book that only has pseudo-code in their, and no actual working code.

 

I will say as well though that I am a big believer in learning by actually doing something, especially in programming.  And for programming, specifically by working with an existing project.  I will say that I remember reading years ago one of the recommendations for getting experience to put on your resume when you never had a programming job before, was to find an open source project and start reading through the code and figuring out how it worked, and I remember dismissing it pretty much immediately. 

 

But I cannot tell you how much I've learned since starting my current job and having to work on my companies existing application (and yes, some of it was what not to do), as well as just the variety of things I've learned.  

 

So regardless of what language you choose, pick one, and start writing code, and start reading the code written by others as well.

 

 

[Franck]

If you are interested in a bit more complicated stuff i highly suggest Design Pattern by the original gang of four. It is a very good read if you plan on going into object oriented programming. There are much more developed patterns that exists but this is where it all started. Very good base on that subject.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns

[Hi P]

10 hours ago, JacobFW said:

avoid any "programming" book that only has pseudo-code in their, and no actual working code.

What does this mean? please elaborate