I have always enjoyed reading books about Programming. From books that lead you to take your first tentative steps with a new language to ones that take you on a deep dive into the world of particular feature. I especially enjoy ones that discuss language agnostic programming concepts such as debugging, estimating etc. Books like Code Complete, The Pragmatic Programmers, The Mythical Man Month and Don’t Make Me Think.

To me technical books are such a bargain. For £20 – £30 you can gain knowledge and insight that can make you so much better at your job, such as taking different approaches to solving the daily problems that we as programmers face. Without a doubt there is a lot of published rubbish out there but fortunately in these days of reviews and questions on the numerous Stack Exchange sites it is a lot easier to avoid the charlatans and their ammo pouches stuffed with silver bullets. Although as you will see from my own list, one or two may still slip through the net!

Here are the programming related books I have read this year, listed in the order that they were read.

The C# Player’s Guide (2nd Edition)

This is my favourite book that I have read whilst learning C#. Immediately accessible. The large format of the book along with the lucid and easy to grasp descriptions of Object Orientated topics make this my recommended book to anyone that is interested in learning C#.

Django By Example

Unfortunately this book is still on the “bought but not read” pile. It is no reflection on the book I have been focusing my attention on learning C# this year.

C# 6.0 and the .NET 4.6 Framework

At 1600+ pages this was certainly the biggest technical book I bought this year. For me it is too unwieldy to use on a day to day basis so, for the first time I have abandoned the printed version of a book and have spent the last 8 months using the e-book. Usually the eBook is open on one monitor whilst Visual Studio is open in the other. Not sure if it’s such a good book for beginners but as a reference I can see myself returning to it to look things up.

The Psychology of Computer Programming: Silver Anniversary Edition

I have been wanting to read this book for several years and finally got round to it. It is by a very long way my favourite read this year and it is in the top 5 all time technical books I have ever read. Although 45 years old, the ideas discussed then are still very relevant today; How we don’t read existing code to see how others have solved problems, the critical importance of having code reviews, egoless programming, estimating and setting expectations around delivery times. I could go on and on. If you haven’t read it, order it today you will not regret it. It will make you a better programmer or manager!

Learn C# in One Day and learn it well

The worse book I read this year. I have already written what I think of it here.  Not much more to add so moving on to the final book…..

Working Effectively With Legacy Code

The final book for this year is another classic and I have high expectations for it. Currently I am a third of a way through but I will have finished it by the end of the year. At this point I think it should be called “Working Effectively with Legacy Object Oriented Code” because a lot of the ideas in the book code are centred around legacy Object Oriented code. I will update this once I get to the end of the book.

Summary

This year marks a slight change from previous year lists in that I haven’t read any Oracle database or Application Express books. There are two reasons for this. First I don’t think there have been any unmissable Oracle books published this year (I am interested in Real World SQL and PL/SQL that was published in September 2016 however I awaiting reviews or to actually have a look through it) –  and secondly most of my spare time has been spent learning C#.

I have taken something from each of these five books this year, yes even Learn C# in a day. I know that as a result of reading these books, I will start 2017 a better programmer.