Developer's Non-Development Book List

I've been slack lately on posting, mostly because I'm still running around speaking and working on the details of CodeStock. So I figure a "must read book list" is great filler until I finish up that SilverLight 2.0 series of posts. Instead of the normal development and programming books though, I'm going to list the books outside of development I think developers should read.

	Charles Petzold's Code is a book I've recommended before, but no less relevant today than it was when it was first published. In these days of frameworks and garbage collectors it's easy to loose sight of how a computer really works. Why is it binary based? What does a logic gate really look like at the circuit level? What are MSB and LSB and how did they cause the PC/MAC software divide for so long? Petzold is a wonderful storyteller and he is at the height of his craft in these pages.
	Waiting for You Cat to Bark? by the Eisenberg brothers is aimed at marketers struggling to adapt to the information age, but reading through this book you'll start to see how software UI - or the user experience - is fundamental to a successful application and required for a website. Yes, you're the developer - but you're the one who knows the technology and should be in the marketing meeting designing the new site that will increase sales for the company (you and the marketing department are paid from the same source, after all). Also, if you've been tasked with or looking to start writing user and use case stories, this is a far better place to start than most agile books - how better to get a non-IT perspective than from a non-IT book?
	The A-Z of Creative Photography by Lee Frost is what we developers would call a "cookbook" - a list of common problems and their solutions. Now why am I pushing a book on photography to developers? Photography is a great way to learn design basics - and let's face it, you suck at PhotoShop. Just because you own a digital camera doesn't mean you know how to take photos any more than downloading an IDE means you know how to write software. After reading this book, I no longer take those boring family photos people avoid looking at - I'm no professional, but I no longer feel the need to fork over a few hundred bucks to some guy a Sears once a year for family portraits. I also understand how to apply the "rule of thirds" in design.
	Eric Raymond's classic The Cathedral & the Bazaar is a must read for every developer, manager, and person involved in software at any level. The essays in this book are all available online, but they are worth having in printed form. The title essay is a look at how linux bucked the system and released a better products with very little control and it's interesting to read this again now that we have something called agile that's getting popular. Long before it was cool to speak of continuous integration, linux was doing it. Also in the book is an essay on "How to be a Hacker" which, aside from answering the question, has help me in the bigger question - how do I identify and hire a hacker (aka passionate software developer).
	I'm listing Beyond the Bullet Points (Cliff Atkinson) and Presentation Zen (Garr Reyonlds) together because I really don't care which book you choose or if you read both - but you need to read at least one. These books are very well known in the "speaker's circle," but even if you have no plans to become a conference junkie like myself these books are of interest to you. At some point you will be tasked to give a presentation on your (or your team's) software - status, features, etc - and these are the moments that will lead to career boosts. Effective presentations skills are not only about communicating the subject matter, they show how competent at understanding and communicating you are. To be honest, we developers suck worse at communicating than we do at Photoshop - and there is no reason we have to.
	The last book on the list is Seth Godin's The Dip. We all know life is a series of ups and downs; consider this book a manual to handling the downs. Only you truly care about your career and you need to be able to decide if the current "dip" (a temporary setback) you face is one to push through or is really a path to a dead end career and it's time to quit and move on. You could read that other "win-win" book, but Seth is a master of communication and a much more enjoyable author, and I highly recommend subscribing to Seth's Blog.

I'm always interested in non-development titles that help me as a developer; feel free to add recommendations in the comments.

Posted By Mike On Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Filed under petzold book | Comments (1)

Chris Coneybeer - Thursday, May 22, 2008 1:26:11 AM

I finished Code a couple of weeks ago and really enjoyed the book. The walk to run approach to understanding how computers work is fun and interesting at the same time.

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About Michael

Michael C. Neel, born 1976 in Houston, TX and now live in Knoxvile, TN. Software developer, currently .Net focused. Board member of ETNUG and organizes CodeStock, East Tennessee's annual developers conference. .Net speaker, a Microsoft ASP.NET MVP and ASPInsider. Co-Founder of FuncWorks, LLC and GameMarx.

Proud father of two amazing girls, Rachel and Hannah, and loving husband to Cicelie who inflates and pops his ego as necessary.

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