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We asked some of our (and your!) favorite authors to share with us their
favorite 10 computer books from the past 10 years. Here's what we got back.
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George Schlossnagle is a principal at OmniTI Computer Consulting, a
Maryland-based tech company that specializes in high-volume Web and email systems. Before joining OmniTI, he led technical operations at several high-profile community Web sites, where he developed experience managing PHP in very large enterprise environments. He is a frequent contributor to the PHP community and his work can be found in the PHP core, as well as in the PEAR and PECL extension repositories.
Before entering the information technology field, George trained to be a mathematician and served a two-year stint as a teacher in the Peace Corps. His experience has taught him to value an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving that favors root-cause analysis of problems over simply addressing symptoms.
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George's favorite books: |
 Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler --
Much more practical than the 'Gang of Four' Design Patterns book, Fowler packs an immense amount of practical design knowledge into this book. If you're working in the web and looking for an introduction to design patterns, I can't recommend this book enough.
by W. Richard Stevens --
APUE (as it is often affectionately referred to) is the authoritative guide to UNIX systems programming. If you want to hack on things like Apache or PHP, this is the place to hone your C skills to the necessary level. Stevens is great because it is not only amazing comprehensive, but incredibly readable as well. The combination of readability and density in Stevens sets a high standard, which many technical authors aspire to. It is the only book in my library that I won't lend out lest I need it.
 Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition by Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington --
Perl was my first scripting language, and thus holds a special place in my heart. Even though I spend most of my time writing either C or PHP these days, I consider the Perl Cookbook to be the gold standard when it comes to the cookbook genre. Its recipes are basic enough that you can actually learn how to program Perl directly from the book, yet useful enough to keep me going back to it over the years.
 Scaling Oracle8i: Building Highly Scalable Oltp System Architectures by James Morle --
Although the title might lead you to believe that this book is dated, it's actually one of the most comprehensive looks at top-to-bottom database performance tuning and capacity planning. Morle covers every relevant aspect of software and hardware performance, from evaluating hardware platforms, to laying out disks, to writing scalable SQL.
Secrets and Lies (Out-of-Print) by Schneier --
Bruce Schneier is probably the most cogent writer on digital security today. While his uber-classic
 Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C, 2nd Edition
is the book to have around if you are implementing encryption systems, Secrets and
Lies is a book to keep on your bedside table, or in your bag for reading on the train in the morning.
by Luke Welling, Laura Thomson --
If you're looking to learn PHP, it's hard to find a better place to start than this book. I keep a copy of this book on my shelf specifically to lend to friends and colleagues who want to learn PHP.
 Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt, David Thomas --
Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt have forgotten more about software
development best practices than most of us will ever know. This is a
book about the software development process, and it is relatively
unique in that it actually delivers on the pragmatism that its title
offers. This book should be on the wish list of every developer who
wants to move from being a 'code monkey' to a professional software
engineer.
 The AWK Programming Language by Alfred V. Aho, Brian W. Kernighan, Peter J. Weinberger --
Yep, you read the title right: Awk. Although Awk has largely taken a
backseat to Perl as THE parsing language for shell programming, this
book is still a gem. Written by the 'A', 'W' and 'K' of Awk, this book
is like peering into the workshop of the early masters. Beyond the
content (it's regarded as the Awk Bible), the examples are both
incredibly rich and practical. It is possibly the best written
computing text I have ever read.
 How to Solve It by G. Polya --
This is the book that convinced me to pursue a degree in mathematics.
It lays out the processes of structured reasoning in simple and elegant
explanations. Though the text concerns teaching problem solving
methodologies for math problems, I use the general skills involved (finding analogous problems, breaking problems into component parts) every day in debugging.
 The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver --
Hey -- I get to have one non-technical choice, right? While I enjoy
Neil Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, and
Robert Jordan as much as the next guy, Barbara Kingsolver manages to
capture the beauty of everyday life in a way few authors do. Her
characters are accessible, their problems real, and her topics manage
the fine art of making a strong political statement without bashing you
over the head with it.
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