Here’s a list of the software development books I actually read since university, sorted by categories and publishing year. I own plenty more that I never got around to reading but I will only list them as I go. I’ll spare you (and me!) the purely programming titles as they are mostly reference books anyways…
The titles with red stars (***) are the ones that really made my tech grow up a notch. My process of buying books is mostly based on Amazon reviews and I never buy one if I feel that the reviews are not encouraging in some way. If you ask me, all books listed here are worth reading for one reason or another.
Business:
Raising Venture Capital for the serious Entrepreneur, Dermot Berkery, 2007
Founders at Work, Jessica Livingston, 2007
Term Sheets & Valuations, Alex Wilmerding, 2006
Deal Terms, Alex Wilmerding, 2005
Engineering your Start-Up, James A. Swanson & Michael L. Baird, 2003 ***
I immediately adopted this one as my very own startup bible…
High Tech Start Up, John L. Nesheim, 2000
Management:
Leading a Software Development Team, Richard Whitehead, 2001
Peopleware, Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, 1999
The Mythical Man-Month, Frederick P. Brooks Jr., 1995
Development Methodologies:
Agile Software Development, Robert C. Martin, 2003 ***
By far the one I enjoyed the most. Gems hidden in the end-book articles also.
Pair Programming Illuminated, Laurie Williams & Robert Kessler, 2003
Test-Driven Development, Kent Beck, 2003
Questioning Extreme Programming, Kent Beck, 2003
Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering, Robert L. Glass, 2003
Peer Reviews in Software, Karl E. Wiegers, 2002
Extreme Programming Explained, Kent Beck, 2000
Rapid Development, Steve McConnell, 1996
Architecture:
Framework Design Guidelines, Krzysztof Cwalina, 2006
Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture, Martin Fowler, 2003
Beyond Software Architecture, Luke Hohmann, 2003
MDA Explained, Anneke Kleppe et Al., 2003
Design:
Domain Driven Design, Eric Evans, 2004
Object Design, Rebecca Wirfs-Brock & Alan McKean, 2003
Component Software, Clemens Szyperski et al., 2002
Professional Design Patterns in VB.NET, Tom Fischer et al., 2002
Refactoring, Martin Fowler, 1999 ***
One of the few books I read that completely applies to Multi Software development.
Applying UML and Patterns, Craig Larman, 1998
Design Patterns, Erich Gamma et Al., 1995 ***
Of course, a classic.
GUI:
Microsoft User Interface Process Application Block, Naveen Yajaman et al., 2004
About Face 2.0, Alan Cooper & Robert Reimann, 2003
Developing User Interfaces for Microsoft Windows, Everett N. McKay, 1999
Databases:
Agile Database Techniques, Scott W. Ambler, 2003
SQL Performance Tuning, Peter Gulutzan & Trudy Pelzer, 2003
SQL in a Nutshell, Kevin Kline & Daniel Kline, 2001
Business Intelligence:
Business Intelligence, Elizabeth Vittet al., 2002
Open Source:
Producing Open Source Software, Karl Fogel, 2005
Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing, Andrew M. St. Laurent, 2004
The Business and Economics of Linux and Open Source, Martin Fink, 2003
Protecting the Virtual Commons, R. van Wendel de Joode et al., 2003 ***
Made me discover the licensing aspect of Open Source, especially the dual licensing schemes.
Web:
Building Websites with VB.Net and DotNetNuke 3.0, Daniel N. Egan, 2005
