r/learnprogramming · 2022

Most-mentioned books in r/learnprogramming during 2022

This page ranks books by exact tracked mentions in r/learnprogramming within the published source unit for 2022. Counts come from the reconciled subreddit-by-month matrix; a source unit may be a bounded sample.

Books ranked

293

Tracked mentions in 2022

Sort by upvotes = sum of comment scores on recognized mentions

Clean Code

Robert C. Martin

Robert Martin's case that unreadable functions are a discipline failure, not an inevitability, argued one renamed variable and one extracted method at a time.

42 in 2022

The Pragmatic Programmer

Andy Hunt

Two working programmers write down the shop habits senior engineers use so junior ones stop reinventing them badly.

42 in 2022

Think Like a Programmer

V. Anton Spraul

You know exactly what your budget app should do and still can't make yourself start typing; V. Anton Spraul wrote the book that breaks that freeze into steps.

32 in 2022

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Harold Abelson

Six chapters into Scheme, you're writing an interpreter for a language you invented an hour ago.

21 in 2022

Introduction to Algorithms

Thomas H. Cormen

A course syllabus gets posted, and a Redditor recognizes it as nothing but this book's chapter headings in disguise.

15 in 2022

Python Crash Course

Eric Matthes

A high school teacher gets tired of Python resources that assume too much, so he writes the one that doesn't.

15 in 2022

Design Patterns

Erich Gamma

Four authors catalog twenty-three recurring object-oriented problems in 1994 and hand every future code review the same argument to have.

11 in 2022

Refactoring

Martin Fowler

Martin Fowler's method for restructuring code's internals without anyone outside noticing that anything changed at all.

9 in 2022

Cracking the Coding Interview

Gayle Laakmann McDowell

The book credited with inventing the modern coding interview, argued about like it's also on trial for it.

8 in 2022

#10

Grokking Algorithms

Aditya Y. Bhargava

A cartoon-illustrated walkthrough of binary search, sorting, and graphs aimed at people who bounced off Introduction to Algorithms.

8 in 2022

#11

The C Programming Language

Brian W. Kernighan

Two authors write the book that becomes 'K&R,' and forty years later Reddit still uses it as shorthand for programmers who had to know everything themselves.

8 in 2022

#12

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

Charles Petzold

Charles Petzold builds a working computer from a doorbell, a flashlight, and a length of wire, then keeps going until it's running software.

7 in 2022

#13

Code Complete

Steve McConnell

Steve McConnell's seven-hundred-page argument that construction, not design or testing, is where most software quality is actually won or lost.

6 in 2022

#14

Eloquent JavaScript

Marijn Haverbeke

Marijn Haverbeke's free JavaScript book teaches closures and recursion, then has its own author admit he wouldn't wish a game-programming career on anyone.

6 in 2022

#15

The Art of Computer Programming

Donald E. Knuth

Four volumes of algorithms and combinatorics Donald Knuth started in 1962 and still hasn't finished, cited more often than it's actually read.

6 in 2022

#16

Clean Architecture

Robert C. Martin

Robert Martin's rule: business logic sits at the center of the system, frameworks and databases plug in at the edges, never the other way around.

5 in 2022

#17

Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++

Bjarne Stroustrup

Bjarne Stroustrup, the man who invented C++, writes the beginner's book on it himself instead of leaving that job to someone else.

5 in 2022

#18

Designing Data-Intensive Applications

Martin Kleppmann

Martin Kleppmann walks backend engineers through every database, queue, and consistency tradeoff they'll eventually get paged about.

4 in 2022

#19

Head First Design Patterns

Eric Freeman

A junior dev dreads every requirement change until a book full of cartoon ducks and strategy patterns rewires how they see the problem.

4 in 2022

#20

Working Effectively with Legacy Code

Michael C. Feathers

A consultant walks into a five-year-old codebase with zero tests and a deadline, and writes the manual for surviving exactly that.

4 in 2022

#21

Domain-Driven Design

Eric Evans

An interviewer asks if you've read Domain-Driven Design, then pivots to recursive Fibonacci when the answer gets complicated.

3 in 2022

#22

The Clean Coder

Robert C. Martin

Uncle Bob's professionalism manual: say no to bad estimates, refuse death marches, and work the 40 hours then study on your own time.

3 in 2022

#23

Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective

Randal E. Bryant

The machine underneath the machine: assembly, memory, and the OS layer that 'just learn C' never actually explains.

2 in 2022

#24

How to Prove It: A Structured Approach

Daniel J. Velleman

A logic textbook opens with truth tables and spends the rest of its pages making the reader write real mathematical proofs instead of just checking someone else's.

2 in 2022

#25

The C++ Programming Language

Bjarne Stroustrup

Bjarne Stroustrup writes the reference manual for the language he invented, and on Reddit it mostly survives as one joke about languages nobody complains about.

2 in 2022