10 Favorite Software Books

These are my 10 favorite software-related books. The order is roughly based on how many times I have read them.

10. Code Complete (Steve McConnell)

A good book, but it’s long so I don’t re-read it as often as I should.

9. Programmer’s at Work (Susan Lammers)

A bit dated, this book has some interesting tales from pioneers in the software industry. I liked it much more than Founders at Work, which to me read more like a book of how some people got lucky.

8. Coder to Developer (Mike Gunderloy)

Some very good advice for how to work with Visual Studio more effectively.

7. Developer to Designer (Mike Gunderloy)

Perhaps some of this book is obvious and it has a lot of needless details, but I still like it.

6. Rapid Development (Steve McConnell)

If you find yourself working on medium to large project teams, this book is invaluable.

5. User Interface Design for Programmers (Joel Spolsky)

I love the UI examples and stories that Joel tells.

4. Joel on Software (Joel Spolsky)

A collection of great articles from Joel Spolsky’s Joel on Software web site. These articles are getting a bit dated, but they are always fun to read.

3. Eric Sink on the Business of Software (Eric Sink)

This an excellent collection of Eric’s writings from his blog and MSDN.

2. Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality (Bob Walsh)

A great book that outlines how you can get started with your own Micro-ISV. I also find all the case studies to be inspiring.

1. Pragmatic Programmer (Andrew Hunt, David Thomas)

My all-time favorite programming book. The topics in it are obvious, perhaps even simple. But the book is short, fun-to-read and always worth revisiting.

You’ll notice there are not any actual technical books listed. I think that’s probably because they go out of date so quickly that I never end up re-reading them much.

What are your favorite software-related books?