Books that have most influenced my software development career

I have read numerous books on software development and have learned valuable things from most of them,

but a small subset of these books has significantly influenced me and how I develop software.

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Effective C++ and More Effective C++

Although I had written a lot of lines of code in BASIC, Pascal, C, and C++ before starting my career, 

it was C++ that was my first professional programming language. As such, it was the first programming 

language in which I started to get past the basic syntax and and learn about more advanced issues and 

nuances of the programming languages. For the first time, I started considering performance issues,

 maintainability, readability, and issues other than just whether the code worked or not. Effective 

 C++ and More Effective C++helped me to see that there was more to programming than basic syntax and

 getting functionality to work. These books helped me to realize that there are general programming

 concepts that are wise to follow but that there are also language-specific concepts and tips one should 

 learn and apply in the programming language of choice. General software development principles apply 

 across many languages, but sometimes it is necessary to know language-specific features as well.

Effective Java, Editions 1 and 2

After such good experiences with Effective C++ and More Effective C++, I was excited to learn about

 the book called Effective Java as I was transitioning from C++ to Java, a transition several years

 in the making. Effective Java did not disappoint. I started reading Effective Java sooner in my Java 

 experience than I had started reading the Scott Meyer's C++ books in my C++ experience and it helped 

 me tremendously. It helped me to see from the beginning that there were more considerations when 

 developing with Java than just writing syntax and making things work.

Java Cookbook

Although I have purchased and read seemingly countless Java-themed books over the years, I've never had a 

book focused on the Java language basics. Instead, I've always had specialized books focusing on aspects

 of Java or Java EE. The way that I learned the basics of the Java programming language was via the Java 

 Cookbook. It helped me realize that I like this recipe-based approach to reading about, learning, and 

 applying a new programming language. I've liked recipe-oriented books ever since, especially for quickly 

 learning and apply a new programming language or framework.

Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java

Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java was my introduction to Groovy. This excellent book provides a 

nice introduction to Groovy that not only quickly introduces its syntax and features but also introduces 

practical ways that Groovy can be applied in regular everyday situations. I was able to quickly see the value 

of learning Groovy and to realize that Groovy was more than just a trendy language fad. This book reaffirmed

 my realization that I learn programming languages best from recipe-oriented books that demonstrate the

 language used in practical situations. Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java and the Groovy language 

 itself have dramatically influenced my overall approach to software development by giving me the tools and

 confidence to do significantly more scripting than I used to do. Being able to script and develop software 

 in similar languages (Groovy and Java) and use the same Java libraries and frameworks has made scripting 

 easier. Easier scripting has meant that I've done more of it and spent less time doing it.

Holub on Patterns: Learning Design Patterns by Looking at Code

I purchased Holub on Patterns after seeing Allen Holub speak at SD West 2005 (I wasn't the only one).

 Holub, the author of Why Extends is Evil and Why Getters and Setters Are Evil, challenged my way of 

 thinking (traditional and commonly accepted way of thinking at the time) about object-oriented programming.

 I definitely look at objects now more from a behavioral perspective than data perspective. Also, although 

 willing to write get/set methods when necessary, my reluctance to write them until needed has been of 

 great benefit as the era of multicores has helped us realize the dangers of mutable state.

Although Holub on Patterns does provide in-depth coverage of some common design patterns implemented in 

Java, the far bigger influence it had on me was in how I think about object-oriented design.

Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development

At a time when developers of enterprise Java applications were being told to use heavyweight 

EJBs and like it, many of us were wondering what we were missing when it seemed overly complex

 to us. Rod Johnson's J2EE Design and Development stuck a chord with me; it was relieving to

 see that I wasn't the only one who thought EJB 1.x was too difficult and cumbersome. More 

 importantly, Johnson's book provided examples and discussion text that helped to see what

 parts of J2EE were worth using and which parts needed improvement. The Spring Framework was

 born out of the examples covered in this book and Spring's success inspired changes in Java

 EEthat make it much more productive and useful. J2EE Design and Development influenced me 

 personally and influenced an entire community. It also helped me to realize that one can be

 correct in thinking something isn't all it's said to be even if the so-called experts insist 

 it is. This has helped me weather numerous fads (and their blindly adherent evangelists) 

 in software development since then. The book also articulated better than I could my own

 thoughts and feelings on enterprise Java development.

Agile Web Development with Rails

During my brief infatuation with Ruby on Rails, I found Agile Web Development with Rails to 

be a great introduction to Ruby on Rails. Although I enjoyed my foray into Rails, I have never

 worked with it to the same degree as I have with Java. Agile Web Development with Rails introduced 

 me to Ruby on Rails, but more importantly it influenced my career, which has mostly not been 

 in Rails, by demonstrating in a practical way how agile development can be done if a client

 is readily available to provide feedback. Agile Web Development with Rails and the Ruby on

 Rails framework itself helped change my way of thinking to see the value ofconvention over 

 configuration. Shortly thereafter, the Java-sphere began to see changes inspired by Ruby on 

 Rails's success. These included Java Persistence API (JPA) adopting "configuration by exception"

 approach and the Grails framework. Ruby on Rails influenced much of the web development 

 community and Agile Web Development with Rails was the tool that allowed me to most easily

 experience this influence personally.

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The Practice of Programming

The Practice of Programming does not waste time with extraneous pages. The 250 page book 

covers the most fundamental issues in programming such as debugging, testing, performance, 

and portability. I read this early in my software development career and find myself reading 

portions of it again from time to time. Many great books have come along since that deal 

with these subjects, but The Practice of Programming was the first to cover most of these for me.

Software Craftsmanship: The New Imperative

Software Craftsmanship: The New Imperative was published at almost the perfect time for me

 in my career. The book helped me articulate my own observations about what made a "software

 engineer" more complete. In addition, this relatively short and to-the-point book helped me 

 discover other approaches that I would later use in efforts to make my code more than just functional.

201 Principles of Software Development

201 Principles of Software Development features 201 short (typically one or two paragraphs) 

descriptions of 201 software development principles with a reference to a generally well-recognized 

expert source with further details on that principle. The text is comprehensive enough to understand

 the principle and the references to proven sources give the reader the ability to learn in more detail 

 how to apply the covered principle. This book not only helped me to solidify these principles in my

 own mind, but helped me to understand the breadth of materials available to the software developer.

During my software development career, I've repeatedly seen trends come and go. Sometimes I'll hear 

a relatively new developer talking about some "new" thing that is really just a reincarnation of the

 same idea in different form that its previous incarnations. 201 Principles of Software Development 

 helped me realize at a relatively early stage in my career that many concepts and principles 

 that were "new" to me, were really not new to the greater software development industry. Most 

 "innovative" concepts in our industry typically share common themes or are even grounded in 

 one or more of the principles covered in this book.