Ask Slashdot: What Should Every Programmer Read? 352
An anonymous reader writes "There's a blog post floating around right now listing articles every programmer should read. I'm curious what articles, books, etc., Slashdot readers would add to this list. Should The Art of Computer Programming, Design Patterns, or Structure and Interpretation
of Computer Programs be on the list? What about The Mythical Man-Month, or similar works that are about concepts relating to programming? Is there any code that every programmer should take a look at? Obviously, the nature of this question precludes articles about the nitty-gritty of particular languages, but I'm sure a lot of people would be interested in those, too. So if you can think of a few articles that every C++ programmer (or Perl, or Haskell, or whatever) should know, post those too."
The story of Mel (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, here; http://www.catb.org/jargon/htm... [catb.org]
The Fortran Coloring Book (Score:4, Interesting)
I wish I'd read Roger Kaufman's book before I started programming. It would've helped a lot.
Here's a few pages to get a taste of the style: http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~wagner... [utsa.edu]
Re:If you haven't read The Myythical Man-Month... (Score:4, Interesting)
No need. The "Mythical Man Month" is merely a series of special cases of the law of diminishing returns and/or The Planning Fallacy. [wikipedia.org]
It's much more efficient to say: "Too many chiefs and not enough braves is bad, and it will always take longer than expected."
Strunk & White: The Elements of Style (Score:5, Interesting)
The best preparation for becoming a good programmer (or scientist or engineer) is to learn how to organize your thoughts and then address only what is necessary and sufficient to accomplish a given task.
I know no book that teaches clarity of thought better than Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style". Clear writing and great coding share a common wellspring.