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Best Programming Books – For Startup Founders and Entrepreneurs

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What books do the best programmers read to stay up-to-date with the latest in the continually changing environment of software development? How do they know which books are really worth their time, and which are nothing more than simple side pleasures?

To some, the best programming books are those that can be easily referenced when they’re stuck in the code. These types of reference materials are, to be certain, some of the most valuable books to have on hand. The internet, however, is often a more easily accessible reference guide in situations like this.

So, what kinds of programming books exist? Beyond reference books, many books help people, like me, understand how programming works at a higher level. Programming is not just about the code, but it is also about what the code creates and how that creation will be used.

Almost anyone can find a snippet of code, copy it, and paste it into place. With luck, it will function properly on its own. Whether or not that code can be created to work with specific intentions will depend on how well the programmer understands the code’s language and syntax.
I’ve found that the best books are those that blend introducing new, concrete knowledge with examples with more abstract ideas that must be addressed while programming.

From foundational books to reference books, from career guidance books to efficiency books, there is a huge variety of content about programming available to programmers who are ready to do more.

Are you one of those programmers? I know I am. Today’s list, though, was not created by me.

It was curated by the ideas, thoughts, and knowledge-base of the amazing CEO Library community. Experienced developers and programmers shared their insight into what are the best programming books, and this is what they recommend:

Best Programming Books

The Silmarillion

The Silmarillion

My favorite books are Tolkien’s the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, and the Silmarillion. In fact these book hold a special place in my memory. In highschool I was so into Tolkien that I delved into linguistics on my own time. I was obsessed with Quenya (Tolkien’s elvish language). I combined that obsession with my mediocre skills as a programmer, and made a sort of dictionary/translator program. This was actually my first venturing into entrepreneurship, because in my naivety I thought I might be able to sell my software to fellow enthusiasts (the first movie was just coming out at the time).
Lucas Morales
Founder & CEO/Zeall.us
Microserfs

Microserfs

Prior to reading the book I had never considered that a career in software development would be an option for me. My parents both grew up poor and chose career paths that would get them to a middle-class salary with the least amount of training. I lived on the outer edge of the suburbs in Georgia and I don’t think I’d met a single computer programmer prior to college. We had an old Packard Bell computer capable of running the original Sim City that eventually caught on fire around the time I read this book. [...] I don’t think I would have picked computer science as my major without the familiarity that I’d had with my own laptop and from the familiarity of the lifestyle outlined in Microserfs.
Alison Alvarez
Co-Founder & CEO/Blastpoint.io
Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

In terms of web design, Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug — so important for anyone learning how to build websites.
Tracy Osborn
Founder/Wedding Lovely
American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

It is unbelievably riveting. It does that thing where at the end of every chapter it leaves you just enough we're like "aah!" and you have to read the first paragraph of the next chapter and then before you know it is a downward spiral and you end up finishing this book. Took me four days to get through this.
Casey Neistat
Founder/368 Creative Space
The Hobbit

The Hobbit

Today is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime.

Richard Branson
Founder/Virgin Group
House of Leaves

House of Leaves

This is a book that you have to hold, because there are parts of it where you need to turn it upside down to read it. There are certain pages where, you are reading it, and it turns in a circle... This is a book that's an entire sensory experience.
Amelia Boone
World's most decorated obstacle racer, full time attorney at Apple
The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work

The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work

The future of work is distributed. Automattic wrote the script. Time for rest of us to read it.
Om Malik
Founder/GigaOM
Reamde

Reamde

I don’t read “business books”. I may read books which were classified as “Business”, “Leadership”, etc; but, if I do, I do so in spite of the category they’ve been deemed to belong to, not because of it.

I generally split books into three main categories. Here are the titles –sorry, but I simply can’t pick just one– that currently hold the top spots in each:

Fiction: Liu Cixin’s “The Three Body Problem” (trilogy); Neal Stephenson’s “Reamde“; and Audrey Niffenegger’s “The Time Traveler’s Wife“.

Gabriel Coarna
Founder/Readable
Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0

Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0

Question: What books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path?

Answer:

  • Anything by Peter Senge.
  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things – Ben Horowitz
  • Once you are Lucky, Twice you are good – Sara Lacey
  • Revolutionary Wealth – Alvin Toffler
  • Black Swan – Taleb
  • Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change, by Ellen Pao.
  • Creative Class – Richard Florida
  • Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull & Amy Wallace
  • Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis
  • American Government 101: From the Continental Congress to the Iowa Caucus, Everything You Need to Know About US Politics – Kathleen Spears
  • The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff.
  • Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.
  • Any book by Herman Hesse
  • The Art of War by Sun Tzu.
Audrey Russo
President & CEO/Pittsburgh Technology Council
The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings

As a boy in Pretoria, Musk was un dersized and picked upon, a smart-aleck known as Muskrat. In his loneliness, he read a lot of fantasy and science fiction. “The heroes of the books I read, ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and the ‘Foundation’ series, always felt a duty to save the world,” he told me.

Elon Musk
Founder/SpaceX
So Good They Can't Ignore You

So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Entrepreneurial professionals must develop a competitive advantage by building valuable skills. This book offers advice based on research and reality--not meaningless platitudes-- on how to invest in yourself in order to stand out from the crowd. An important guide to starting up a remarkable career.
Reid Hoffman
CEO/Linkedin
Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs

It’s unusual for modern biographies to be this good. It’s especially unusually for the subject of the biography to approach the biographer in the way that Steve Jobs did (thinking that he was the intellectual heir of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein). But despite those two things, this bio is and will likely forever be a classic. It shows Jobs at his best–determined, creative, prophetic–and at his worst–petty, selfish, tyrannical and vicious. You can learn just as much about what kind of leader you probably don’t want to be from this book as you can from anything else. That’s what is so strange about Jobs and this biography. You read it and you’re blown away and impressed but I think very few of us think: yeah, I want to be that guy. I want to treat my kids that way, I want to be obsessed with trivial design things that way, I want to hate that way, and so on. You admire him but you also see him as a tragic figure. That’s how you know that Isaacson did an amazing job with this book. TC mark
Ryan Holiday
Founder/Brass Check
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

Sorrell, CEO of the communications house/ad agency, WPP, has a rather eclectic mix this summer:

  • Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency—James Andrew Miller
  • Universal Man: The Seven Lives of John Maynard Keynes—Richard Davenport-Hines
  • Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future—Ashlee Vance

Sir Martin Sorrell
CEO/WPP
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