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The essential reading list


One can spend a lifetime reading only a certain number of books. This list is to keep that reading focussed. The idea is taken from many engineering focussed reading lists, but I have added a bunch of books by myself too.

I will continue to update the list, both in terms of things left to read and the things I have read already.
  • How to Ask Questions the Smart Way, Eric S. Raymond
  • The Curse of the Gifted Programmer, Eric S. Raymond to Torvalds, 2000
  • On Bike Shedding, Poul Hennink-Kamp, FreeBSD list, 1999
  • No Silver Bullet, Fred Brooks (paper)
  • How to become a Hacker, Eric S. Raymond
  • HBR Guide to Managing up and Across
  • Suddenly in Charge: Managing Up, Managing Down, Succeeding All Around by Matuson, Roberta Chinsky
  • Principles, Ray Dahlio
  • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
  • Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time
  • The Three Box Solution: A Strategy for Leading Innovation
  • The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
  • Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
  • Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
  • Inspired, Marty Cagan
  • Powerful, Patty McCord
  • Thinking - Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
  • Zero to One, Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
  • The Hard thing about Hard Things, Ben Horowitz
  • Only the Paranoid Survive, Andy Grove
  • High Output Management, Andy Grove
  • Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug
  • The Elements of Style, Strunk and White
  • The Mythical Man Month, Fred Brooks
  • The Four Steps to Epiphany, Steve Blank
  • The Lean Startup, Eric Ries
  • The Goal, Eliyahu Goldratt
  • Masters of Doom, David Kushner
  • Hackers and Painters, Paul Graham
  • Lean Software Development, Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck
  • The Principles of Product Development Flow, Donald G. Reinertsen
  • Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, Kent Beck
  • What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful!
Designers

  • 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People, Susan Weinschenk
  • About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design, Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, David Cronin, Christopher Noessel
Developers

Extended Canon:

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