I love to expand my knowledge and learn not just about new technologies, but how things work. I find it fascinating to dig deep into computer programming, technology concepts, and really geek out on things. That’s why I love software development or programming books that aren’t just about some technology and how to do something, but rather books that really make you think and teach you not just programming skills but critical thinking about problem-solving skills. As a software developer for over 15 years and a person who teaches software developers, I have learned that if someone isn’t entertained, they aren’t learning. That’s why I put together a list of fun, entertaining and useful books.
For most software developers, coding is the fun part. The hard bits are dealing with clients, peers, and managers, staying productive, achieving financial security, keeping yourself in shape, and finding true love. This book is here to help.
Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual is a guide to a well-rounded, satisfying life as a technology professional. In it, developer and life coach John Sonmez offers advice to developers on important "soft" subjects like career and productivity, personal finance and investing, and even fitness and relationships. Arranged as a collection of 71 short chapters, this fun-to-read book invites you to dip in wherever you like. Soft Skills will help make you a better programmer, a more valuable employee, and a happier, healthier person.
This book is an awesome deep dive into the way the computer hardware and the low-level software systems of computers really work. As a programmer, this was extremely interesting to me. It was fascinating to see how computers evolved over time and how the programming we do today is built on top of so many other concepts and ideas.
This book was super fun to read and I couldn’t put it down. I like doing the exercises and thought experiments and really didn’t want the book to end. By the end of the book I felt like I really understood how the underlying hardware worked and I found many useful ideas I could apply to my work as a software developer.
What do flashlights, the British invasion, black cats, and seesaws have to do with computers? In CODE, they show us the ingenious ways we manipulate language and invent new means of communicating with each other. And through CODE, we see how this ingenuity and our very human compulsion to communicate have driven the technological innovations of the past two centuries.
Using everyday objects and familiar language systems such as Braille and Morse code, author Charles Petzold weaves an illuminating narrative for anyone who's ever wondered about the secret inner life of computers and other smart machines.
I love writing good clean code. There is something refreshing about writing or reading code that reads more like a book than some obscure instructions to a machine. This book goes into the details of how to write “clean code” and what makes it clean.
I felt like I learned so much about writing good code from reading this book about things that you are never really taught in school or on the job as a software developer.
I found so much of the book so interesting because I could use what I was learning right away to become a better programmer.
If you want to become a better programmer and are looking for a book that will entertain you and be fun along the way, I highly recommend Clean Code.
Even bad code can function. But if code isn't clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Noted software expert Robert C. Martin presents a revolutionary paradigm with Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Martin has teamed up with his colleagues from Object Mentor to distill their best agile practice of cleaning code "on the fly" into a book that will instill within you the values of a software craftsman and make you a…
I loved reading this book! I wish I could read it for the first time all over again. Even though this isn’t exactly a programming book or a book about software development, the concepts in this book will be extremely fascinating to any software developer.
This book goes into all kinds of logical puzzles and digs deep into formal systems and how they come about. There are exercises that will take you hours to do in the book, but you’ll have fun the whole time while you are racking your brain.
I learned a lot of programming concepts I thought I understood on a much deeper level, like recursion and language design.
Douglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of maps" or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence. Goedel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.
Even though this book is a bit older, I had a ton of fun doing the programming problems in this book. This book really makes you think outside the box as a programmer and try to solve various problems in different ways depending on what you are trying to optimize for.
I really learned a lot about not just solving a problem, but solving a problem for a specific set of goals. Overall it made me a better programmer and made me think more deeply about programming problems.
If you want to improve your problem-solving skills and have fun doing it, I would definitely recommend this book.
When programmers list their favourite books, Jon Bentley's collection of programming pearls is commonly included among the classics. Just as natural pearls grow from grains of sand that irritate oysters, programming pearls have grown from real problems that have irritated real programmers. With origins beyond solid engineering, in the realm of insight and creativity, Bentley's pearls offer unique and clever solutions to those nagging problems. Illustrated by programs designed as much for fun as for instruction, the book is filled with lucid and witty descriptions of practical programming techniques and fundamental design principles. It is not at all surprising that…
Wow! This book is exactly what every programmer has always wanted to know or even felt guilty about not knowing and it’s all presented in an extremely simplified and fun way.
This is one of those books where you get excited in the morning when you wake up because you know you are going to be able to read more in the book and you are hoping the book will never end.
It’s rare to find a big book that I enjoyed reading so much and felt so short. This book covers almost everything you ever wondered about computer science. After reading this book, I felt like I finally understood everything a programmer was supposed to know and I no longer felt that nagging feeling of being an imposter.
On the expertise I claim only a deep interest in history, leadership, and social history. After some thirty-six years in the fire and emergency services I can, I think, claim to have seen the best and the worst of human behaviour and condition. History, particularly naval history, has always been one of my interests and the Battle of Jutland is a truly fascinating study in the importance of communication between the leader and every level between him/her and the people performing whatever task is required. In my own career, on a very much smaller scale, this is a lesson every officer learns very quickly.
Captain Heron finds himself embroiled in a conflict that threatens to bring down the world order he is sworn to defend when a secretive Consortium seeks to undermine the World Treaty Organisation and the democracies it represents as he oversees the building and commissioning of a new starship.
When the Consortium employs an assassin from the Pantheon, it becomes personal.
Captain James Heron First Into the Fray: Prequel to Harry Heron Into the Unknown of the Harry Heron Series
The year is 2202, and the recently widowed Captain James Heron is appointed to stand by his next command, the starship NECS Vanguard, while she is being built. He and his team soon discover that they are battling the Consortium, a shadowy corporate group that seeks to steal the specs for the ship’s new super weapon. The Consortium hires the Pantheon, a mysterious espionage agency, to do their dirty work as they lay plans to take down the Fleet and gain supreme power on an intergalactic scale. When Pantheon Agent Bast and her team kidnap Felicity Rowanberg, a Fleet agent…
