Top Programmers' Must‑Read Book List: Essential Reads for Every Developer

Early on, I wanted to compile a list of books recommended by experienced top programmers. Full‑stack engineer Dmitry Shvetsov gathered suggestions from Bob Martin, Jeff Atwood, DHH and others.

Bozhidar Batsov, VP at Toptal, says programmers should master these 15 books:

Inside the Machine (Amazon rating 4.6)

Code Complete (Douban rating 9.3)

Concrete Mathematics (Douban rating 9.6)

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (Douban rating 9.5)

Program Design Methods (Chinese edition, Douban rating 8.7)

He adds that even with 20 years of experience you can still learn a lot from these titles, including:

The Algorithm Design Manual and Algorithms for deeper algorithm understanding

Compilers (The Art of Compiler Construction) to know how compilers work

The C Programming Language (Douban rating 9.4)

Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, 3rd Edition (Douban rating 9.5)

UNIX Network Programming, Volume 2 (Douban rating 8.3)

For object‑oriented programmers, Batsov recommends:

Test‑Driven Development for Object‑Oriented Software (Douban rating 7.6)

Domain‑Driven Design (Douban rating 8.1)

Programming Style (Douban rating 9.4)

Robert C. Martin (Bob) also suggests:

Design Patterns (Douban rating 9.1)

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (again)

The Art of Computer Programming (Douban rating 9.5)

The Secret of Turing (Douban rating 8.8)

Refactoring (Douban rating 9.2)

Extreme Programming Explained (Douban rating 8.2)

Redshirts (Douban rating 8.4)

The “Bobiverse” Trilogy

Jeff Atwood, co‑founder of Stack Overflow, shares his own list, including classics such as Code Complete (2nd edition), The Mythical Man‑Month, Web and Mobile Usability Design, Rapid Software Development, The Person‑Month, Design of Everyday Things, About Face 4, The Road to Software Innovation, Programming Pearls, The Pragmatic Programmer, Web Usability Design, Regular Expressions Cookbook, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Visual Explanations, Envisioning Information, Beautiful Evidence, and The Way of Software Development.

David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), creator of Ruby on Rails, highlights his top five books:

Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns

Refactoring (Douban rating 9.2)

Enterprise Application Architecture Patterns (Douban rating 8.3)

Domain‑Driven Design (Douban rating 8.1)

Is Your Light On? (Douban rating 8.1)

The Elements of Style (Douban rating 8.2)

Writing Craft (Douban rating 8.5)