21 August 2005
I've been asked on several occasions (from students, from blog readers, and from a few friends who happen to be in the business) what my recommended reading list is. I've never really put one together formally, instead just sort of relying on impromptu answers that cover some of my absolute favorites and a few that just leap to mind at the time.
(Note that this is a reprint, so to speak, of the same entry on the old weblog, but I wanted to kick the Reading category off with a reprise of what I'd written before.)
(UPDATE 2021: I'm updating this as time goes by. Come back here periodically for new titles and updates.)
Enough is enough. It's time for me to post my recommended reading list, broken out for both Java and .NET programmers. (If you're of one camp, it's still worth reading books on the other camp's list, since the two environments really are Evil Twin Brothers.) And I've left my own books off the list, because I think it's rather forward of me to recommend them as recommended reading--naturally, I think they're all good, but whether or not they make the cut of "recommended reading" is for others to weigh in on, not me (at least not here). (Update: several commenters on the old blog suggested it was not out of line to recommend my own books if I thought they were worth recommending, so I added them.)
Java Recommended Reading list:
- Effective Java by Bloch.
- Java Puzzlers by Bloch and Gafter. You think you know the Java language? Try it. (Makes for great interview question fodder, and for that reason alone practicing Java programmers should have a copy on their shelf.)
- Effective Enterprise Java by Neward. (Had to do it. :-) )
- Concurrent Programming in Java (2nd Ed) by Lea.
- Either Inside Java2 Platform Security by Gong or Java Security (2nd Ed) by Oaks.
- Component Development for the Java Platform by Halloway.
- Inside the Java2 Virtual Machine by Venners.
- Java Development with Ant by Hatcher and Loughran.
- Either Java RMI by Grosso or java.rmi by McNiff and Pitt.
- Server-Based Java Programming by Neward. For obvious reasons. :-) Actually, I still think this book is applicable if you want to understand the reasons why an app server makes some of the restrictions that it does, but I freely admit that I don't think I did a great job of "closing the loop" on that and finishing the book with a good summary that ties everything together. Ah, retrospect....
- Servlets and Java Server Pages by Jones and Falkner, possibly Java Servlet Programming (2nd Ed) by Hunter, if you aren't planning to use JSP. (Jason's legendary bias against JSP, right or wrong, puts him somewhat out of tune with what a majority of Java web-client shops are doing. That said, it's a great servlets resource.)
- AspectJ in Action by Laddad. AspectJ represents the best of the AOP solutions, IMHO, and this book represents the best of the AspectJ books available.
.NET Recommended Reading list:
- C# In a Nutshell (2nd Ed) by Drayton, Albahari, and Neward. For obvious reasons. :-)
- Advanced .NET Remoting by Rammer.
- Essential ADO.NET by Beauchemin.
- Inside Microsoft .NET IL Assembler by Lidin.
- SSCLI Essentials by Stutz, Neward and Shilling. For obvious reasons. :-)
- Debugging Applications by Robbins.
- Inside Windows 2000 by Russinovich and Solomon.
- Essential COM by Box. (Yes, I mean Essential COM and not his more recent Essential .NET book. The first chapter of Essential COM is probably the best well-written technical prose I've ever read in my life, and everybody who ever wanted to write reusable components in C++ needs to read it to understand why C++ failed so miserably at that goal. Once you've seen that, you're ready to understand why components are so powerful and so necessary.)
- Essential ASP.NET by Onion.
- Expert C# Business Objects or Expert VB Business Objects, by Lhotka. Not an intro to business objects, per se, but a great read on how to build a framework. Pay close attention to how Rocky handles distribution; he avoids the canonical problems of "distributed objects" by not distributing objects, but instead making them mobile objects.
- The Common Language Infrastructure Annotated Standard by Miller
- Programming in the .NET Environment by Watkins et al.
C++ Recommended Reading list:
(For the twelve people left in the world still writing C++ code, anyway.)
- The C++ Programming Language (3rd Ed) by Stroustrup.
- Effective C++ (1st, 2nd or 3rd Ed) by Meyers.
- More Effective C++ by Meyers.
- Effective STL by Meyers.
- Inside the C++ Object Model by Lippmann. You don't know how C++ works until you've read this cover to cover. Twice. And peeked at everything under the hood with a debugger, just to make sure Stan's right. Seriously.
Database/Relational Storage Recommended Reading list:
- Introduction to Database Systems (8th Ed) by Date. Heavy on theory, and for that reason alone should be read at least once by any practicing programmer who thinks they understand SQL and the relational world.
- SQL for Smarties (3rd Ed) by Celko. Actually, you need to own just about everything by Celko.
- Principles of Transaction Processing by Bernstein and Newcomer.
- Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques by Gray and Reuter. What to read when you're done with the Bernstein and Newcomer book and still want to know more about the Zen of Transactional Processing.
Security-related Recommended Reading list:
- Rootkits by McGraw.
- Secrets and Lies by Schneier.
- Either Cryptography Decrypted by (can't remember the name offhand), Practical Cryptography by Schneier and Ferguson, or Applied Cryptography (2nd Ed) by Schneier. The first is a lightweight introduction to the subject, the second is a more detailed introspection, the third required reading for anybody who wants to be a security wonk.
- The Code Book by Singh.
- Hacking Exposed (5th Ed), by McClure, et al.
- Exploting Software, by Hogland and McGraw. The most fun book in the list, if you ask me.
- Reversing by Eilam. Who says unmanaged code is "safe from reverse-engineering"?
- The Art of Deception, by Mitnick.
Operating System/Platform Reading list:
- Windows Internals (4th Ed) by Russinovich and Solomon. Actually, any of the last three editions (2nd, 3rd, 4th) is awesome, so look for 3rd Ed in a bargain bin and pick up a great bargain.
- Operating Systems (2nd Ed) by Tanenbaum. The original "Minix" book. Taught me the basics of how an O/S works, and the basic concepts are still applicable to this day.
Platform-agnostic Recommended Reading list:
- Design and Evolution of C++ by Stroustrup. It's fascinating hearing how a language develops over time, and what was behind some of the decisions in the features of the language. For example, why did multiple inheritance come before templates or RTTI? Not because it was more important, but because Stroustrup wanted to tackle MI first because he wasn't sure if or how he could do it. He describes that as a great regret, that he didn't do templates first.
- Component Software (2nd Ed) by Szyperski.
- Rapid Development by McConnell. Read this before you read any of the Extreme Programming books, because this book describes a whole taxonomy of what I think a lot of people are reaching for in agile and other methodologies.
- The Inmates Are Running the Asylum by Cooper.
- The Invisible Computer by Norman.
- Refactoring by Fowler.
- Design Patterns by Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides.
- Pattern Oriented Software Architecture, Vol 1 by Stal et al.
- Pattern Oriented Software Architecture, Vol 2 by Schmidt et al.
- Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Fowler.
- Enterprise Integration Patterns by Hohpe and Woolf. Excellent discussion of message-based architecture. I personally think the title is something of a misnomer, but it's understandable since message-oriented communication is the easiest means by which to integrate heterogeneous systems.
Note that this list will undergo revision and change as I continue, so I'm putting a link to this item in the links column in the sidepanel to the left for easy reference. For now, I'm just listing them out as they come to mind. Later, if I have time, I'll put paragraphs of detail behind them so you can know why I recommend them. (Updated on 13 Feb 2002) (Moved to this weblog 21 Aug 2005) (Updated 5 Oct 2005)
Look for more book reviews and recommended reading via the "Reading" category on the RSS feeds. There's undoubtedly titles that I'm forgetting, and I'm hoping I'll get around to blogging more about the books I'm reading now, including Ruby (the Pickaxe book and the Rails book), some other titles in the Pragmatic series, as well as some WS-*-related stuff and (of course) the staple C# and Java stuff. And of course I'm always open to suggestions of new and interesting technical titles to peruse....
Update: Steven Rockarts pointed out that Rocky's "Objects" books are missing, as is Fritz's Essential ASP.NET. Added. (He also lists Object Thinking, by West, but I don't care for that book--too Zen, I think, for most readers.)
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Last modified 21 August 2005