10 Must Read Books for software Engineers in 2023
A curated list of books that every experienced developer must-read.
1. Cracking the Coding Interview :
Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions is a book by Gayle Laakmann McDowell about coding interviews. It describes typical problems in computer science that are often asked during coding interviews, typically on a whiteboard during job interviews at big technology companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Facebook and Palantir Technologies.
First published in 2008, it has been translated into seven languages: Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Spanish, and Korean. It describes solutions to common problems set in coding job interviews.The sixth edition of the textbook was published in 2015.
The book has been cited in peer reviewed papers in scientific journals such as PeerJ.
2. Introduction to Algorithms :
Introduction to Algorithms is a book on computer programming by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, and Clifford Stein. The book has been widely used as the textbook for algorithms courses at many universities and is commonly cited as a reference for algorithms in published papers, with over 10,000 citations documented on CiteSeerX. The book sold half a million copies during its first 20 years. Its fame has led to the common use of the abbreviation “CLRS” (Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein), or, in the first edition, “CLR” (Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest).
In the preface, the authors write about how the book was written to be comprehensive and useful in both teaching and professional environments. Each chapter focuses on an algorithm, and discusses its design techniques and areas of application. Instead of using a specific programming language, the algorithms are written in pseudocode. The descriptions focus on the aspects of the algorithm itself, its mathematical properties, and emphasize efficiency.
3. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship :
For a programmer, the most essential thing that ought to be kept in mind is how to compose clean code. The process of development is highly complex and you will only be able to nail it with lots of practice.
The code that you are penning has to be clean to make everything work. Otherwise, there will be multiple bugs that you will witness and the software that you have designed will tumble down. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship will concentrate on providing you with tons of written code that you can look into to find out the mistakes that you might be making. The basic focus is on providing a thorough comparison between the essential factors that determine if a program is good or bad. The book is a three-section one, the first one aims to provide the pattern, practice, and principles. In the second part, readers will come across a number of case studies alongside a few practical examples. The book will also familiarize you with all the required details that you need to enforce in molding a badly written code into a clean one.
4. Clean Architecture: A Craftsman’s Guide to Software Structure and Design :
When it comes to any aspect related to software engineering, the very basic that you ought to know is that no matter where you are working, you will require to put the universal rules first. The author has already documented a few of the best sellers and Clean Architecture, of course, is no exception. The book focuses on the factors that you need to understand when applying for a job. In this book, readers will be able to come across a myriad of issues that will deduce direct solutions without any undue blabber. The author has talked about the basic principles that you need to keep in mind to attain the position you aspire to be.
Looking at the technical aspect, the book will help you learn more and hone your skills when it comes to data management, component separation, etc. This book will help you get a much better insight into the aspects that truly matter in coding and the things you can skip without causing much harm to the software that you are working on. If you have just begun or you are still in the beginner phase, this book is highly recommended.
5. Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction :
Code Complete is a software development book, written by Steve McConnell and published in 1993 by Microsoft Press, encouraging developers to continue past code-and-fix programming and the big design up front and waterfall models.
6. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software :
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software is a book by Charles Petzold that seeks to teach how personal computers work at a hardware and software level.
7. The Art of Computer Programming
The Art of Computer Programming is a comprehensive monograph written by the computer scientist Donald Knuth presenting programming algorithms and their analysis. Volumes 1–5 are intended to represent the central core of computer programming for sequential machines.
8. Programming Pearls
The essays in this book present programs that go beyond solid engineering techniques to be creative and clever solutions to computer problems. The programs are fun and teach important programming tecniques and fundamental design principles.
9. A Philosophy of Software Design
This book addresses the topic of software design: how to decompose complex software systems into modules (such as classes and methods) that can be implemented relatively independently. The book first introduces the fundamental problem in software design, which is managing complexity. It then discusses philosophical issues about how to approach the software design process, and it presents a collection of design principles to apply during software design. The book also introduces a set of red flags that identify design problems. You can apply the ideas in this book to minimize the complexity of large software systems, so that you can write software more quickly and cheaply.
10. The Pragmatic Programmer
Andy Hunt is an author on software development. Hunt co-authored The Pragmatic Programmer, ten other books and many articles, and was one of the 17 original authors of the Agile Manifesto. He and partner Dave Thomas founded the Pragmatic Bookshelf series of books for software developers.
