Reading List

Almost as contentious (maybe more) than asking a programmer what their favorite editor/language is would be to ask them what the most important books are for a budding programmer to read. Every smart programmer I know has a small list of books that are essential (they claim) to know anything important about programming, software, etc.

Taking the union of all such books would yield a stack taller than you are. I'm doing my best to ferociously play catch-up.

I tend to read books 2 or 3 at a time: one is usually about a specific technology, one higher-level about programming/coding as a whole, and one usually more for fun (if I'm lucky, I get to read fiction! That normally happens most in the summer).

Because broadcasting life is more fun than living it, here's what I've been reading, and what's next in queue.

Read last year or so...

• The Little Schemer, by Friedman and Felleison


• The Seasoned Schemer, by Friedman and Felleison


• The Reasoned Schemer, by Friedman, Byrd, and Kiselyov


• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, by Abelson, Sussman, and Sussman.

These are what I've read since starting school, Fall 2009.

• The Pragmatic Programmer, by Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt (Finished October, 2009)


• The Little MLer, by Felleison and Friedman (Finished November 13, 2009)


• The Mythical Man-Month, by Fred Brooks (Finished November 13, 2009)


• Coders at Work, by Peter Seibel.


• The C Programming Language, by Kernighan and Ritchie


• Purely Functional Data Structures, by Chris Okasaki

If you have any suggestions, let me know!

The list of books in my room that I haven't started yet (or aren't actively finishing up) is far larger, and I'll get to those next. Wish me luck!