Best 5 Must-Read Books for Every Software Engineer In 2022

Best 5 Must-Read Books for Every Software Engineer:

  • Do you want to become a better software engineer ?
  • Do you want your projects to be easier to maintain follow good programming practices ?
  • Do you want to be able to quickly understand a complex code base when joining a new company ?
  • Do you want to work efficiently with other engineers of the same or different specialties designers and product managers ?
  • Do you want to gain knowledge and skills necessary to pass coding interviews in big tech companies like google facebook or microsoft etc. ?

If you answered yes to any of those questions then this article just might be for you.

Read those 5 books to become a better Software Engineer

Hello Friends, I am from quickstudyhelper.com. These books are suggested by a software engineer CARA with about 10 years of professional experience both freelancing and working in big tech and rapidly growing startups.

I will present you with five books that in my opinion can help you become a better software engineer or achieve any of the goals I mentioned at the beginning. The books are technology independent which means it doesn’t matter if you are front-end, back-end, data mobile, or anything else engineer.

Best 5 Must-Read Books for Every Software Engineer In 2022

  1. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
  2. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
  3. The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers
  4. How Many Licks?: Or, How to Estimate Damn Near Anything
  5. Cracking the Coding Interview, 6th Edition: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions

You will find value here the first four books coming in order from the least experience required to the most experienced required.

The fifth book is a bonus as I don’t think it in itself will make you a better engineer but it will help you get opportunities and exposure to situations that will put you in a position of learning

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5 Books Software Engineers Need to Read Right Now to Get Ahead

1. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

NameClean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
AuthorRobert C. Martin Series
Author NationalityAmerican
Paperback464 pages
Originally Published1 August 2008
LanguageEnglish
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

If you are fresher or about to get your first job. The chances you haven’t yet worked in a codebase shared between multiple people for a long period of time. Working with others brings a whole new level of challenges to your software engineering career clean code talks about those challenges. And how to work through them by writing a well-structured easily understandable, and maintainable code from things as simple as naming your variables through when and how to use comments, and how to avoid using them to class organization and app architecture good practices on each level of software, abstractions including some design, patterns, and concurrency.

This book is a must-treat if you want to produce a high-quality code it will help you develop good standards of how tech-code should be written. It will allow you to save time by writing reusable code and not having to guess what you’re old. Code was supposed to do it will also make code peer reviews easier for both you and the reviewer as your code will just be self-explanatory. 

You can find links to paperback and Kindle and audiobook versions of this and other books I mentioned in this article.

Buy Book: Amazon

2. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

NameDesign Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
AuthorErich Gamma, John Vlissides, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson
PublisherAddison-Wesley
Author NationalityUnited States
Paperback395 pages (Wikipedia)
Originally Published21 October 1994
LanguageEnglish
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

Clean code mentions some design patterns. A design pattern is kind of a template for a common software engineering problem it’s a description of how to structure your code to achieve the result you want in a clean proven way. it’s important to know the most popular design patterns so you do not frame them on the wheel. you can save time by applying those proven solutions and your teammates will also understand what you’re doing assuming they are familiar with the given pattern or you can just simply point them to a wiki page about it instead of having to argue how your solution works and why it is correct. when joining a new company I guarantee you you will find a lot of design patterns being used and being able to spot them will save you time and get you from the onboarding process to delivering value much faster by using design patterns you will be able to avoid some unexpected bugs and issues as being resistant to them is often hardwired into the pattern itself.

Buy Book – Amazon

3. The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers 

NameThe Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers 
AuthorRobert C. Martin Series
Author NationalityAmerican
Paperback256 pages
Originally Published4 May 2011
LanguageEnglish
The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers 

I know it sounds almost the same as the first book. and yes it’s written by the same author however this book focuses on the other set of challenges that come from working in a team, communication, collaboration, and leadership. Those are areas we often neglect as software engineers, but they are crucial.

If you want to become a professional or continue on a path of an engineering manager clean coder focuses on you, not your code it teaches you how to communicate with teammates, and stakeholders other engineers, or other professions like product managers, or designers it talks about taking responsibility estimating saying yes and no time management, collaboration mentoring and working in a team and around the project what I liked about this book was the actual conversation examples the same conversation was repeated a couple of times using different communication methods and different outcomes were presented based on that for me being both not great at communication and not a native speaker this book helped greatly and actually helped me be happier at work as I was able to stake my boundaries and expectations as well as my progress and my blockers.

Buy Book – Amazon

4. How Many Licks?: Or, How to Estimate Damn Near Anything

NameHow Many Licks?: Or, How to Estimate Damn Near Anything
AuthorAaron Santos
Publisher(s) Running Press, 2009
Paperback176 pages
Originally Published1 January 2009
LanguageEnglish
How Many Licks?: Or, How to Estimate Damn Near Anything

One part of communication especially with product managers or other business stakeholders is estimations as you progress in your career and take on more and more responsibilities they are also more expectations towards you one of them is that you will be able to estimate when a given project or feature will be ready how many engineers do you need in your team to deliver it before a given date what tradeoffs you can make to deliver faster what are the risks that my job are that I stick into the deadline how many leaks are not about managing and estimating a software project but it gives you methods and tools to estimate the near anything.

It will also be helpful if you are planning a freelance career as clients also request estimations and often they put their own private money into whatever it is you are developing for them this book is very short easy and fun to read and I find it useful for both my engineering career and my everyday life the thing.

Buy Book – Amazon

5. Cracking the Coding Interview, 6th Edition: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions

NameCracking the Coding Interview, 6th Edition: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions
AuthorGayle Laakmann McDowell
Edition6, illustrated
Publisher(s) CareerCup, LLC, 2015
Paperback696 pages
LanguageEnglish
Cracking the Coding Interview, 6th Edition: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions

I’m recommending this cracking the coding interview. This book helped me score my internship at Microsoft and google showed me how to use the algorithms. I learned at uni to solve problems usually presented at coding interviews at big companies or in programming competitions. It explains their algorithms and their applications to you so if you learn best by example this just might be the book for you

Buy Book – Amazon

Conclusion

I have one final piece of advice for you. Those are my top five books to read. If you want to become a better more professional software engineer no matter if you work or want to work in big tech startup freelance or if you still study. I’ve read them all at different stages in my career and one thing I wish I’d done differently is to read them earlier also remember books on their own are not worth much. It’s the practice you put after reading them that matters so try to apply everything you learn as soon as you learn it you will remember it longer and you’ll be able to spot chances to use it easier in the future.

Thank You!!!

Stay Safe, Stay Healthy


FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

What is the best book for software engineers?

In summary, here are 5 of our most popular software engineer books
1. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
2. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
3. The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers
4. How Many Licks?: Or, How to Estimate Damn Near Anything
5. Cracking the Coding Interview, 6th Edition: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions

Should software developers read books?

Of course, book reading is a must in software engineer or any profession, the book has great importance.

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