Book recommendations

[James Boyd]

Hi Folks.

Just following up from our last event - I'd be super grateful for your book recommendations on all things software related. As I mentioned last time, I've been bingeing on some Uncle Bob recently, Clean Code, Clean Agile and Clean Architecture. I've really enjoyed these. From these, I've noted a few of Bob's recommendations.

I've got Fowler's, Analysis Patterns on the shelf and I've read both the white XP book plus 2nd edition (Kevin's suggestions). I've also read Kernighan's, UNIX - A history and a memoir and I'm still working through my copy of the UNIX Kernel. I've read a couple of test books too including Myers, The art of software testing - of its time, I know.

I'm looking for those books that you just couldn't put down and/or that are considered as 'classics'.

Many thanks

Jim

[Tim Dobson]

Thanks for the recommendations! Some ones I'm keen to follow up here.

The Pragmatic Programmer is a classic, and if you work out which bits are outdated and which bits are still worth having, then you will get something from it.

I'm going to give you two slightly left field book suggestions - Running Lean, and High Output Management.

Running Lean is about the intersection of product and software.

HOM is about the intersection between teams of humans and stuff being built. It's dry af in places, but it is widely regarded as "the" book in its field despite being old.

I'm no authority on programming books - and eager as anyone for more recommendations.

-Tim

p.s. I enjoyed Scrum : The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time but not sure I recommend it, as much as I enjoyed reading it. If you find someone you need to win over to Agile, it'd be a good book to give them.

[Chris]

Hi Jim,

Not read these but the folks that like the books you mention also like these:

Growing object oriented code guides by tests (GOOS) by freeman and Pryce

Working with legacy code by Feathers

Refactoring to Patterns by Keriosky

Mikado Method by Ellnestam and brolund

Regards

Chris

(Sent from my iphone.) 

On 25 Mar 2025, at 8:13 pm, 'James Boyd' via xp-manchester <xp-man...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Hi Folks.

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[The Mr Tortoise]

Domain driven design distilled

.net components was influential for me.  But it's a bit odd the world went in a different way ... But it was a description of microservices / bounded context done properly before those ideas really got realised.

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[Kevin Rutherford]

Morning all,

Two software teams seem to have deeply influenced my career: Brian Kernighan's Unix team at Bell Labs in the 70s, and Kent Beck's C3 team at Chrysler in the late 90s. So here are a couple of picks from members of those teams, in no particular order:

• The Nature of Software Development (2015) by Ron Jeffries. A delightful little overview of XP that doesn't mention XP. Low on theory, high on practical common sense; easy to read and understand.
• Software Tools (1976), by Brian Kernighan and PJ Plauger. A complete tutorial that walks you through building half a dozen key Unix tools, including variants of m4 and nroff. In 1982 I built all of the tools from this book, and the experience taught me so much about application structure, program design, the Unix philosophy etc. Most of the kids these days wouldn't be able to do any of this stuff :-)
• The Elements of Programming Style (1974), also by Kernighan and Plauger. Each mini chapter of this book takes a real piece of software and refactors it to fix bugs, improve maintainability, and teach a lesson about software design. The examples are all drawn from real applications found by the authors, written in various languages from Fortran to PL/1 (although you don't need to understand much about those languages to follow along). This was groundbreaking: the first refactoring book (although the term hadn't been coined then). If you can find a copy, and if you're up for becoming something of a polyglot, I cannot recommend this piece of history highly enough. Utter genius.

Cheers,

Kevin

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[James Boyd]

Tim, Chris, themrt... and Kevin,

Many thanks for your recommendations - truly appreciated.

Please feel free to continue adding.

Best regards

Jim

[Andy Longshaw]

Not too much of the typey-typey but I really like Ron Jeffries' The Nature of Software Development

Also, Fowler's Refactoring, Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture, and even UML Distilled. All well written and definitive in their day.

And if you wanted some history, books I loved way, way back...

The Design of the Unix Operating System - Bach

Unix Network Programming, Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment, and TCP/IP Illustrated all by RIchard W Stevens

...although this may just have been where my mind was at the time :-)

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[James Boyd]

Andy,

Many thanks for your suggestions - much appreciated.

Jim

Sent from my iPhone

On 31 Mar 2025, at 21:36, Andy Longshaw <reflect...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Leon Hewitt]

I should add another recommendation for Ron Jeffries' The Nature of Software Development. Short and packed full of good ideas.

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[James Boyd]

Thanks Leon - much appreciated.

Jim

Sent from my iPhone

On 1 Apr 2025, at 12:44, Leon Hewitt <leon....@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Graham Ashton]

I'm also a fan of Ron's short book. Ron once gave me some of the best technical advice I think I've ever had. I was struggling to work out how to TDD a GUI, and he said he only tests what's likely to break. Pure pragmatism, and an approach that's served me well.

Is software design in scope for these book recommendations? I really like Rebecca Wirfs-Brock and Alan McKean's book, Object Design. Sadly it went out of print years ago. Happily you can download the PDF for free.

https://www.wirfs-brock.com/DesignBooks.html

Rebecca and Alan were prime movers in "Responsibility Driven Design" (the first of the "DD" methodologies). CRC cards are well covered, which I often find to be a really handy technique if I get myself a bit stuck.

Also on the topic of OO design (with some good related coverage of testing), Sandi Metz and Katrina Owen's "99 Bottles" is great. I've recommended it to a few people recently who've contacted me enthusiastically a few weeks later, excited about their new-found skills.

Cheers,
Graham

[James Boyd]

Graham,
Many thanks for your suggestions.

Yes - design is definitely ‘in scope’. 😁

I can sense your enthusiasm coming thru’ so I look forward to digesting these.

Best regards

Jim

Sent from my iPhone

> On 1 Apr 2025, at 15:31, Graham Ashton <gra...@agileplannerapp.com> wrote:
>
> I'm also a fan of Ron's short book. Ron once gave me some of the best technical advice I think I've ever had. I was struggling to work out how to TDD a GUI, and he said he only tests what's likely to break. Pure pragmatism, and an approach that's served me well.

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[Kevin Rutherford]

I'm also a huge fan of the Wirfs-Brock books.

And I have a soft spot for _Object Thinking_ by David West, although it can be quite academic and preachy.

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[Kevin Rutherford]

On the subject of Martin Fowler, _Analysis Patterns_ is excellent. I'm a fan of _UML Distilled_ too, although he didn't distill it anything like far enough imo...

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