好书 - 走看看

I was asked to make a list of the above. My first reaction was "How should I know?" But then I figured I could at least list books that I believe have been influential in my circles. Here they are.

Design Patterns by Gamma, Helm, Johnson, and Vlissides (1995)

Although the true publication date puts it too early for this list, I'm going to include it because it marks the beginning of an important trend: that of programmers drawing attention to what they repeatedly do, on a rather small scale. It's the beginning of a shift away from grand theorizing to observation on the ground. It laid the groundwork for...

Refactoring, by Martin Fowler (1999)

What an absurd idea: a catalog of how to change code so it does the same thing as it did before. But this book led to refactoring IDEs, which have given programmers enormous power to shape programs like a potter shapes clay. It also made a revolutionary claim: it's good to do things over.

The Pragmatic Programmer: from Journeyman to Master, by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas (1999)

Once, people really did think that programmers needed to know only programming and design languages plus a few big ideas. (Build software like bridges!) Book like those above chipped away at that. This book capped the trend by unequivocally treating programming as a craft. We need no longer long to be engineers.

Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, by Kent Beck (1st edition 1999)

This book grew out of the same trend, but strongly emphasized two additional ideas: that programming is a social activity, and that programmers gain freedom by shaping themselves and the code in response to the arbitrary demands of the business. It also spurred the coalescing of a variety of underground methods into a visible alternative to conventional software development.

Agile Software Development, by Alistair Cockburn (2001)

The best summing-up of what the Agile methods have in common, concentrating on the social. Many people who haven't read the book have been infected by ideas someone else learned from it.

Programming Perl, by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Jon Orwant (2000, 3d edition)

This book's influence is tightly tied up with the influence of Perl itself, which allowed many nonprogrammers (like testers) to automate what they otherwise wouldn't have, blurred the boundaries between systems and quick 'n' dirty scripts, and paved the way for a reconsideration of dynamically typed languages that unashamedly favor programmer power over execution speed.

Working Effectively With Legacy Code, by Michael Feathers (2004)

Relentlessly practical, "WELC" is, to my knowledge, the first book to successfully attack the problem of how to shape programs that have already hardened into an ugly and unmaintainable form. Just published, it hasn't had time to be hugely influential, but it will be.

Lessons Learned in Software Testing, by Cem Kaner, James Bach, and Bret Pettichord(2001)

This is the testing book for non-testers to read. It treats software testing as it is, not as it should be - and it shows that testing as it is, if treated seriously, can be very good indeed.

UML Distilled, by Martin Fowler (1st edition 1997)

A wonderful example of telling less than you know, this book is the one for the person who wants UML as part of her toolkit, but doesn't intend to make a way of life out of it. I've heard that its unexpectedly good sales made thin computer books respectable again, reason enough for inclusion on this list.

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (1996, 2nd edition)

OK, this is cheating, since only the second edition was published within the last ten years. But it's an enduring description of how simple, powerful ideas build upon themselves - something easy to forget, but the reason computers are both so marvelous and so useful.

好书

Ten most influential computer books of the past ten years