Top 50 New Software Development Books

4 March 2009

Posted in Top Lists

It’s been nine months since I created the Top 100 Best Software Engineering Books, Ever, with the best books ever released. I still refer to it when I want to pick up a timeless classic.

But last week I suddenly had the desire to know what the new best software development books are. And I couldn’t find any such list. So, of course, I made it myself.

In this post I proudly present the Top 50 New Software Development Books, where new means “less than two years old”. This list was created using a weighed mix of the following criteria:

Number of ratings on Amazon.com
Average rating on Amazon.com
Number of ratings on GoodReads.com
Averate rating on GoodReads.com

Note: The time that has passed since a book’s release date was part of the calculation. For example: A book that got three 5-star ratings in just four months is listed higher than a book that got the same ratings in a much longer period of time.

Some other things worth pointing out:

Like in the previous edition, I ignored all technology-specific titles. Only books about generic software engineering topics were allowed on the list.
I discarded all re-releases of books that had earlier editions before 2007. The only exception is

Making Things Happen, because Scott Berkun changed the title of his book. And because he’s a nice bloke who granted an interview with me.
Thomas Erl is on this list three times (#6, #17, #24). He didn’t pay me for that, unfortunately. He just did it all by himself.
Three books released in 2009 were already able to get listed here, which is quite an achievement:

Agile Testing (#28),

97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know (#33), and

Scrumban (#49).
There are 22 books from 2007 on this list, 25 books from 2008, and 3 from 2009.
While making this list I drank 8 cups of coffee, and consumed a full bag of Belgian chocolates.
This must be the first list of mine where Steve McConnell is not listed.

I hope you will enjoy the results…

	Title / Author(s)	Release
1	Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software Scott Rosenberg	26-1-2007
2	Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship Robert C. Martin	11-8-2008
3	Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware Andy Hunt	15-8-2008
4	Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager Michael Lopp	12-6-2007
5	Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think Andy Oram, Greg Wilson	26-6-2007
6	SOA Principles of Service Design Thomas Erl	28-7-2007
7	The Productive Programmer Neal Ford	3-7-2008
8	Smart and Gets Things Done: Joel Spolsky’s Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent Joel Spolsky	31-5-2007
9	Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management Scott Berkun	25-3-2008
10	Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software Michael Nygard	30-3-2007
11	The Art of Agile Development James Shore, Shane Warden	26-10-2007
12	Service-Oriented Modeling: Service Analysis, Design, and Architecture Michael Bell	25-2-2008
13	Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises Dean Leffingwell	8-3-2007
14	The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing’s Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine Charles Petzold	16-6-2008
15	Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design Bill Buxton	11-4-2007
16	Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk Paul Duvall, Steve Matyas, Andrew Glover	9-7-2007
17	SOA Design Patterns Thomas Erl	23-10-2008
18	The Developer’s Guide to Debugging Thorsten Grötker, Ulrich Holtmann, Holger Keding, Markus Wloka	11-8-2008
19	Agile Adoption Patterns: A Roadmap to Organizational Success Amr Elssamadisy	7-7-2008
20	Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management Johanna Rothman	7-6-2007
21	The Principles of Project Management Meri Williams	13-3-2008
22	Introduction to Information Retrieval Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan, Hinrich Schütze	7-7-2008
23	Head First Software Development Dan Pilone, Russ Miles	11-1-2007
24	Web Service Contract Design and Versioning for SOA Thomas Erl, Anish Karmarkar, Priscilla Walmsley	21-9-2008
25	The Art of Multiprocessor Programming Maurice Herlihy, Nir Shavit	29-2-2008
26	Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Thinking and Organizational Tools for Large-Scale Scrum Craig Larman, Bas Vodde	22-12-2008
27	SOA in Practice: The Art of Distributed System Design Nicolai M. Josuttis	24-8-2007
28	Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams Lisa Crispin, Janet Gregory	5-1-2009
29	The Business Analyst’s Handbook Howard Podeswa	4-11-2008
30	Scrum and XP from the Trenches Henrik Kniberg	4-10-2007
31	xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code Gerard Meszaros	31-5-2007
32	Applied SOA: Service-Oriented Architecture and Design Strategies Michael Rosen, Boris Lublinsky, Kevin T. Smith, Marc J. Balcer	13-6-2008
33	97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know Richard Monson-Haefel	13-2-2009
34	Perfect Software: And Other Illusions about Testing Gerald M. Weinberg	29-8-2008
35	Expert Product Management: Advanced Techniques, Tips and Strategies for Product Management & Product Marketing Brian Lawley	10-10-2007
36	The Enterprise and Scrum Ken Schwaber	13-6-2007
37	Algorithms in a Nutshell George Heineman, Gary Pollice, Stanley Selkow	1-11-2008
38	The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility Michele Sliger, Stacia Broderick	29-5-2008
39	Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions Bill Scott, Theresa Neil	15-1-2008
40	If I Only Changed the Software, Why is the Phone on Fire? Lisa K. Simone	23-3-2007
41	Puzzles for Programmers and Pros Dennis Shasha	7-5-2007
42	Managing the Test People Judy McKay	27-4-2007
43	Practical Project Initiation: A Handbook with Tools Karl E. Wiegers	8-8-2007
44	Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises Roger Sessions	19-5-2008
45	How We Test Software at Microsoft Alan Page, Ken Johnston, Bj Rollison	16-8-2008
46	The One Page Project Manager for IT Projects Clark A. Campbell	4-8-2008
47	The Art of Lean Software Development: A Practical and Incremental Approach Curt Hibbs, Steve Jewett, Mike Sullivan	15-12-2008
48	Code Leader: Using People, Tools, and Processes to Build Successful Software Patrick Cauldwell	5-5-2008
49	Scrumban – Essays on Kanban Systems for Lean Software Development Corey Ladas	12-1-2009
50	Software Requirement Patterns Stephen Withall	13-6-2007

The book Getting Results from Software Development Teams from Lawrence J. Peters (8-6-2008) would have been #51. But alas, I have to stop somewhere…