IT Academy Book List
From Corporate Training Wiki
The books on this page are books about IT and Computing as a profession. They don't include technical books about specific technologies and programming languages (see the IT Academy Technical Book List for these books). The books on this page should be "BIG" books, that is books that are likely to stand the test of time.
Contents |
[edit] Programming as a Career
This section of books starts with the Pragmatic Trilogy and then moves on to other books about professional development.
[edit] The Pragmatic Trilogy
This set of three book teaches you the core skills of being a software developer and remaining a software developer as technologies and the software environment changes. The original book "The Pragmatic Programmer" was published in 2000 but remains as relevant today as it was then.
| Title | Author | Date | Publisher/Book Link | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Practices of an Agile Developer | Venkat Subramaniam, Andy Hunt | 2006 | The Pragmatic Programmers | Google Book Search |
| The Passionate Programmer | Chad Fowler | 2009 | The Pragmatic Programmers | Google Book Search |
| The Pragmatic Programmer | Andrew Hunt, David Thomas | 2000 | The Pragmatic Programmers |
[edit] Professional Development
The Passionate Programmer is included in this section as well as its subject is all about managing your career and remaining employable.
| Title | Author | Date | Publisher/Book Link | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Passionate Programmer | Chad Fowler | 2009 | The Pragmatic Programmers | Google Book Search |
[edit] Theory and Practice of Software Development
This set of books includes texts about the practice of software development.
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering is a book on software engineering and project management by Fred Brooks, whose central theme is that "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."
Object-Oriented Software Construction Second Edition is widely considered a foundational text of object-oriented programming. Head First Object Oriented Analysis and Design is a good book for introducing the OOD concepts and can complement Meyers book.
We do a lot of our low level technical designs in UML, specifically sequence and object diagrams. the UML User Guide is a good reference when using the language.
Martin Fowler's Refactoring book is a standard text when introducing the concepts of code refactoring and code 'smells'. It is a book any good software developer should have access too.
The Kent Beck Test Driven Development book is the recognised primer in TDD, but a bit light on coverage of every-day issues (how best to isolate that class for testing? Mock it or create a double? etc.), and also shifts from Java to Python after a couple of chapters. So when you understand the red-green-refactor process and are comfortable using it, take a look at Roy Osherove's excellent Art Of Unit Testing, which goes a little deeper and contains excellent examples in C#.
| Title | Author | Date | Publisher/Book Link | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship | Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob) | 2008 | Prentice-Hall | |
| Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction | Steve McConnell | 2004 | Microsoft Press | |
| Extreme Programming Explained | Kent Beck | 2005 (2/E) | Addison-Wesley | Google Book Search |
| Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design | Brett McLaughlin | 2006 | O'Reilly | Google Book Search |
| Object-Oriented Software Construction Second Edition | Bertrand Meyer | 1997 | Prentice Hall PTR | Google Book Search |
| Refactoring : Improving the Design of Existing Code | Martin Fowler | 1999 | Addison-Wesley | Google Book Search |
| Test Driven Development | Kent Beck | 2002 | Addison-Wesley | Google Book Search |
| The Art Of Unit Testing with examples in .NET | Roy Osherove | 2009 | http://www.manning.com/ | |
| The Mythical Man-Month - Essays on Software Engineering | Frederick Phillips Brooks | 1982, 1995 (2/E) | Addison-Wesley | Google Book Search |
|
The ThoughtWorks Anthology Essays on Software Technolgy and Innovation | Edited by Daniel H. Steinberg | 2008 | The Pragmatic Programmers | Google Book Search |
| The Unified Modelling Language User Guide | Grady Booch | 2005 | Addison-Wesley | Google Book Search |
[edit] Patterns
The book Design Patterns is a classic in the patterns world and is often referred to as the Gang of Four book. Design patterns is probably one of the main books to learn patterns principals but for a beginner in this area the book can be difficult to digest. The Head First Design patterns book is a much more accessible introduction to design patterns and makes a good starting point.
Refactoring to patterns is the perfect bridge between design patterns and refactoring and show how to apply the principals between both disciplines.
Martin Fowler is one of the Gurus in the Patterns world.
| Title | Author | Date | Publisher/Book Link | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Design Patterns | Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides | 1995 | Addison-Wesley Professional | Wikipedia |
| Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture | Martin Fowler | 2002 | Addison-Wesley Professional | Google Book Search |
| Refactoring to Patterns | Joshua Kerievsk | 2004 | Addison-Wesley Professional | Google Book Search |
| Integration Patterns | Gregor Hohpe | 2003 | Addison-Wesley Professional | Google Book Search |
| Head First Design Patterns | Eric Freeman, Elisabeth Freeman, Bert Bates, and Kathy Sierra | 2004 | O'Reilly Books | Google Book Search |
[edit] History
How have Microsoft become as big as they are? Fair play or bad business? "Microsoft Rising" traces the history of Silicon Valley during the 1990s and Microsoft's dominance. This book is published by the IEEE Computer Society, the world's main organization for computing professionals along with the ACM (American Computer Manufacturers).
Bill Gates gets an entry in "Portraits in Silicon". This alone makes interesting reading given the date of publication.
| Title | Author | Date | Publisher/Book Link | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Rising | Ted G. Lewis | 1999 | IEEE Computer Society Press | Google Book Search |
| Portraits in Silicon | Robert Slater | 1989 | The MIT Press | Google Book Search |
| The Pentium Chronicles | Bob Colwell | 2006 | Wiley |
[edit] Theory of Computing / Computer Science
The books in this section go in depth into the theory and mathematics behind computing. If you haven't looked at computability theory, analysis of algorithms, proofs of correctness, etc. then some of thse books are a starter. You probably won't use these things directly but there will be insights into why things are the way things are in the work you do.
From the back cover of The Art of Computer Programming:
If you think you’re a really good programmer… read [Knuth’s] Art of Computer Programming… You should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing.
–Bill Gates
| Title | Author | Date | Publisher/Book Link | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Art of Computer Programming, Vol 1 - 3 | Donald Knuth | 1999 | Addison-Wesley | Wikipedia |
| Theory of Recursive Functions and Effective Computability | Hartley Rogers | 1987 | MIT Press |
