Do you have your favorite developer books? Whether it’s code or a good book, reading is one of the main passions developers have. That’s why we’ve set up this list of unmissable titles for programmers with some recommendations by our community members worldwide, as a gift idea for a dev friend or a nice gift for yourself. Read on!
Do you have a book about interesting topics for devs? Then don’t keep it to yourself! Send it to us and we will publish it on this community-driven list. Also, don’t miss our live Dev Book Club meetings with great authors!
Developer books sent by the Codemotion community!
Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman
Recommended by Tommaso Allevi
“This book has reached me how to be better at learning,” says Codemotion Community friend Tommaso Allevi. As we always like to remember, it’s not all about code: thinking and learning are central in the work of any developer today, and learning how to do it better can be a life-changer.
Goodreads link
The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win – Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford
Recommended by Mauro Bennici
“It might not help you be a better developer, but this helps to understand how non-organized companies can become delirious,” explains Codemotion Community friend Mauro Bennici. If you’re working anywhere in the IT industry, you will love it as much as you love DevOps!
Goodreads link
Fundamentals of Software Architecture – Mark Richards, Neal Ford
Recommended by the Codemotion Community on Instagram
Are you trying to take the jump from developer to software architect? This book is definitely a great start. With the shift still going on from the monolith to microservices, it’s key for any aspiring architect to deeply understand the nature of these changes and understanding the tradeoffs behind architectural choices.
Goodreads link
Solve for Happy – Mo Gawdat
Recommended by Ruth Penfold
Written by former Google CXO Mo Gawdat, this book goes beyond mere programming by applying logic to improve people’s life, offering ways to solve problems the happy way.
Goodreads Link
The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results – Gary Keller, Jay Papasan
Recommended by Alesia Braga
This bestseller doesn’t address coding directly, but its teachings can perfectly fit a developer’s role, specific troubleshooting, or a hackathon: how focusing on a single task and clearing all the noise around it can help to obtain better results.
Goodreads link
Wohpe – Salvatore Sanfilippo
Recommended by the Codemotion Community
This book by Italian Developer Salvatore Sanfilippo takes us into a sci-fi world where deep Artificial Intelligence is banned. However, the extreme severity of climate change calls for extreme actions, including the creation of a huge neural network to help save humankind.
Goodreads link
Microserfs – Douglas Copeland
Recommended by Arnaldo Morena
One of the best (or the best?) representations of a young developer’s universe, aspirations, struggles and everyday situations. A must for everyone who is working or has ever worked in the tech industry.
Goodreads link
How Google Works – Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg
Recommended by Alesia Braga
How Google Works is Google’s history as told by some of its main architects. Schmidt and Rosenberg explain the journey from a cool and promising startup to the behemoth company it is today: a guide to understanding the decisions, mindset, and turning points that shaped the company’s success.
Goodreads Link
Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker – Kevin Mitnick
Recommended by Simone Cicinelli
The ultimate hacker memoirs. Kevin Mitnick, the hyper-famous precocious American cracker and hacker, narrates his own history and the accomplishments that led him to become the biggest name in the story of hacking.
Goodreads Link
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software – Gamma, E., Helm, R., Johnson, R. e Vlissides, J.
Reccomended by Andrea Saltarello, Fabio Evangelist
Big-time designers share their experiences in object-oriented software, offering invaluable insights and solutions to apply to developers in this area. It also includes many code examples!
Goodreads Link
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software – Charles Petzold
Recommended by Giorgio Pomettini
Code is a language. That’s the very point of this book by Petzol. As a language, code can also be the subject of creativity and innovation, becoming more and more a way of understanding and shaping the world that surrounds us.
Goodreads Link
Managing Data Science – Kirill Dubovikov
Recommended by Najla Said
Data Science and Machine Learning are hot trends in the IT industry, with more and more companies looking to apply these solutions in their strategies. This book is a must for whoever wants to dive deeper into these topics.
Goodreads link
The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses – Eric Ries
Recommended by Daniel Gebler
Thinking of kickstarting your own startup? Go ahead, but be sure you take a good read at this book before you do it. The Lean Startup has become something like the official guide of the startup industry because of its amazing way of explaining the role of innovation, agility, and management.
Goodreads link
Joel on Software – Joel Spolsky
Recommended by Alessandro Atria, Juna Salviati, Davide Cerbo, Fabio Evangelista
Since Spolsky started his blog back in the year 2000, he has become some sort of prophet of programming. This book (which full title is ‘Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity’) should be in every programmer’s library. Or at least, visit his website, where most of the essays are taken from.
Goodreads link
A Philosophy of Software Design – John Ousterhout
Recommended by Ivano Pagano
It’s a short book based on capturing those aspects of writing software that are not taught in classrooms but learned through professional experience. The author used his experience teaching these topics to college students, and shared them in this small jewel of high-quality content.
Goodreads link
Clean Code – Robert Cecil Martin
Recommended by the Codemotion Community on Instagram
The book’s full title is Clean Code – A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. It will help coders to understand the differences between good code, bad code, and clean code thanks to data, statistics, and real-life examples.
Goodreads link
Modern Software Engineering – David Farley
Recommended by the Codemotion Community on Instagram
David Farley is some sort of continuous delivery guru. The book is divided into four main parts that cover the main concepts of software engineering today, the constant need for learning, managing complexity, and tools for supporting developers today.
Goodreads link
The Pragmatic Programmer – Andy Hunt, Dave Thomas
Recommended by the Codemotion Community on Instagram
The main concept driving this book could certainly be “code smarter, not harder.” It will help you reuse, adapt, and fix your code for different purposes and scenarios through practical and -of course- pragmatic examples.
Goodreads link
Algorithms to live by – Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths
Recommended by the Codemotion Community on Instagram
Computer science meets real life. This book helps us understand how algorithms can also be used to solve everyday problems, decisions, and situations. If you are having a hard time making a tough decision or planning your next steps in life, maybe computers can help you as much as therapy!
Goodreads link
Send your dev book review!
Help us make this list grow with a book you loved.
It’s not all about technical topics: you can also share books that can be inspirational for anyone working in the Tech industry. Some ideas? Career advise, developer books about business aspects, equality, life stories, biographies, and more!