Monday, December 12, 2005

Ten Programming Must Have Books - Part 1

Well it's getting close to the end of the year. That's when everyone's coming up with a list of one sort or another. I have decided to throw out my opinion on 10 books that should be in every open source programmer's library. Naturally they will be available for purchase in the Thinking Monkey Shop. This list isn't definitive, not complete at all and will certainly reflect my personal biases. So this means NO complaints. If you don't like the list, please feel free to compile your own list and I will either link to here on this post or make a more complete resource guide. Of course this my annual PLEASE support this blog drive so IF you don't have these, get'm here.

In classic top ten countdown style I will start with #10 and work my way up to #1. Given the length of this post I have decided to split it into three parts. So without further ado here's #10

#10 - Linux(R) Quick Fix Notebook (Bruce Perens Open Source) - Prentice Hall Publishing tapped Bruce Perens, noted Linux guru for a series of books. The great thing about this book is that contains nearly everything you will want to set up but don't do often enough. Let's be frank here. Setting up and troubleshoot file servers, mail servers and web servers are not fun and unless you do it every day, you are likely to forget some crucial step to secure the web server etc. It's full of handy useful tips for things that you don't do often enough to remember but when you do them, it's a very good idea to do them well. Let's face it - you are a programmer and don't always have in long term memory the best configuration for a web server.

#9 - Linux Cookbook. Yet another O' Reilly's book that underpromises and over delivers. Helpful if you are just running a data center or just a single webserver. The cookbook format delivers very precise instructions with great writing. The humor delivered with this book makes this enjoyable and highly useful.

#8 - The Art of Project Mangement - If you are an open source programmer, you will at some point do project management. It cannot be avoided especially in the beginning of the project or when there are just a few developers. You can do this well or you can do what everyone else often does and wing it. For the project it's much more helpful to do this well. I look at project management this way. Remember the wagon wheel with spokes radiating from a central hub? Project management is that hub and without it the whole thing rattles and will certainly not work. Scott Berkun's book is well written, engaging and far from the typical dry project management book. Berkun is a former Microsoft employee He worked at Microsoft from 1994-2003, on Internet Explorer 1.0 thru 5.0, Windows and MSN. Say what you want about MS, those were the true heydays of MS development.

Thus ends part 1 of my three parter on 10 must have programming books.

Related Posts:
Part One: "Ten books an open source programmer needs to have on the shelf."
Part Two: "Ten books an open source programmer needs to have on the shelf."
Part Three: "Ten books an open source programmer needs to have on the shelf."