Essential Reads for Software Engineers

Software Development Fundamentals

These are a few of the books that helped me when I first started as a software developer. They allowed me to stand out as a more refined software engineer, in a sea of junior engineers.

Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

Author: Robert C. Martin

How this book helped me: The benefit of this book was similar to the Effective Java book. It gave me a leg up on the other junior engineers I was working with. It helped me avoid common pitfalls that junior developers make.

grokking algorithms

Author: Aditya Y. Bhargava

How this book helped me: I found that this book was quick to give me a solid understanding of how core data structures and algorithms work. Not having a degree in computer science, I didn’t have multiple classes to ease me into the the topics. This was a great reference that provided top notch visuals to aid in DS&A explanations.

Effective Java

Author: Joshua Bloch

How this book helped me: Java was the language I started using in my first role as a software engineer. This book allowed me to standout among junior engineer and not make common mistakes and inefficiencies that are typical.