Best programming books

I guess I like making lists.  So here they come, my favourite programming books (in no particular order):

• Domain-Driven Design / Eric Evans

  This books talks about the essence of writing software: Creating a model for some real life domain. This book is based on object oriented design, but goes much farther and contains a well of experience and guidelines.

• The Pragmatic Programmer. From Journeyman to Master /
  Andrew Hunt, David Thomas, Ward Cunningham

  Collected wisdom how to be a (pragmatic) programmer, ranging from the little detail to the big concept.

• Agile Web Development with Rails /
  Sam Ruby, Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson

  The one book on concrete technology to be included. Even if you don’t plan to use Rails, it is so much of an eye opener how simple (not only) web development can be when done right.

• The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management /
  Tom DeMarco

  One of many great books by Tom DeMarco on the the psychology and social interaction of programmers and teams.

• Getting real / 37Signals

  A (free online) book about the business- and programming philosophy of 37signals, a company developing web applications. A lot of thought provoking statements, often contrary to common wisdom.

A honorable mention goes out to Tips, Tricks & Recipes for Sybase ASE by Rob Verschoor for discussing every Sybase question we ever had in epical depth. We never found out how he read our minds in advance : )

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