My Favorite Programming Books of 2016

As a developer I love programming books. Yes, I can Google and search API documents, look at blog posts and find most of my answers. With all that said it's nice to have a book in hand, that I can easily flip through to find most if not all my answers in one place.

Good technical books really help take all the concepts you read about online and coalesce them into one narrative. I especially like books where the narrative builds upon itself taking you from relatively beginning concepts to much more advance.

The books below have all helped me in my career in 2016. They were not all published in 2016, but they are all still relevant as of 2016.

Honorable Mention

Ember.js Cookbook

Before I start I'd like to mention my new book the Ember.js Cookbook! It'll take you from a beginner Ember.js developer to advanced in no time! The book covers all the basic concepts like models, templates, components and controllers as wells as more advanced topics like authentication and creating your own add-on.

Other Books I'd recommend

These books are in no particular order. They all cover different programming topics. Many of them are geared towards JavaScript. Although some like Code Complete and the Pragmatic Programmer can be ready by anyone.

Code Complete 2nd Edition by Steve McConnell

Code complete is probably my number one pick for overall best programming book. Beware it's long, over 900 pages so this isn't going to be an easy ready. It goes over, debugging, classes, data and control structures and refactoring to name a few. By the end of the book you'll have a solid knowledge of software construction.

I read most of this book, but now I just use it for reference occasionally.

Learning JavaScript Patterns

When talking about design patterns many people reference the gang of four. That's fine but what about JavaScript? That's where this book comes in. It's short, only 236 pages, but concise. You'll understand when to use each pattern and why to use them. Check it out!

JavaScript the Good Parts

JavaScript the Good parts has a mixed reputation. Some people swear by it, others not so much. It's not an easy read and many examples you'll need to take some time to understand. With that said it's a remarkable book. It shows you the best practices in JavaScript. It covers a lot of topics, arrays, objects, functions etc.

I've been reading this book off and on for the last few years. It's helped me become a better JavaScript developer.

The Pragmatic Programmer

I found this book much easier to follow then Code Complete, which is often mentioned by programmers as the other must have book for programmers. This book covers career development, architectural techniques, reuse and more. It's an easy read and often humourous.

I read this book a few years ago and I couldn't put it down.

Speaking JavaScript

Dr. Alex Rauschmayer runs a blog named 2Ality and also wrote this book. I visit Alex's blog fairly regularly because it has such great content. This book is no exception. You'll find in depth explanations on ES5, syntax and variables and lots of examples.

Cracking The Coding Interview

This book will prepare you for your developer interview. In our industry, with few exceptions, you should expect white boarding, algorithm problems and take home tests during your coding interview. This book will prepare you with 189 programming interview questions. It's a good resource.

I read an earlier edition of this book and it helped me out with my last technical interview.

Introduction to Algorithms

This is an older book from 2009 however many of the concepts still hold up today. I read this book first in my Algorithms class in college. This book is not an easy ready, however the fundamentals will help you understand algorithms. I use this mostly as a reference book.

Programming JavaScript Applications

I interviewed the author of this book Eric Elliott a few months ago. We discussed techniques on how to take a JavaScript technical interview. It's by far one of my more popular podcast episodes.

The book covers advanced to intermediate topics on JavaScript including design, MVC, performance, redundancy, security and deployment. I would highly recommend it for more advanced JavaScript developers.

Practical Node.js

I also interviewed this author Azat Mardan last year. We discussed Node and React and how it was like writing a book.

Azat is an amazing Node developer and I'd highly recommend this book. It's a few years old now, but it is still relevent even today.

Future

Thanks for reading this long list of books! If you haven't already please sign up for my mailing list below! I'll keep you updated on the latest in Ember.js and JavaScript. And I occasionally give out discount codes!

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