10 Programming Books You Absolutely Want Within Easy Reach

To make this list, a book must be on my “close” shelf, and must

  • Be useful today
  • Be incredibly well written

I have a second list coming, 10 Programming Books You Absolutely Must Read – those are not on my easy reach shelf, but are equally important.

Note also that many of these are not yet released; they represent the updated versions of books I keep close at hand…

Full Disclosure: As an author, I try hard neither to criticize competing books nor to hype mine.  You’ll find just one (out of a couple dozen) of my books in this list. Finally, these links are through my private Amazon Associates account, and thus I gain a few pennies if you buy them (more if they are mine).

About Jesse Liberty

Jesse Liberty has three decades of experience writing and delivering software projects and is the author of 2 dozen books and a couple dozen online courses. His latest book, Building APIs with .NET will be released early in 2025. Liberty is a Senior SW Engineer for CNH and he was a Senior Technical Evangelist for Microsoft, a Distinguished Software Engineer for AT&T, a VP for Information Services for Citibank and a Software Architect for PBS. He is a Microsoft MVP.
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  28. Kevin Hebert says:

    I’m noticing a lack of C++ books on there. I understand not wanting to hype your own, but your Teach Yourself in 21 hours book has helped me tremendously, and is still passed around my office as a reference.

  29. RajaThilahar says:

    I’m new to see this link…. shall i want to join here what shall i do?

  30. I am no professional programmer, but as an amater I wrote a blog post (9 programming books I have read and somewhat liked) where, as the title suggest, I recommended 9 programming books. And our intersection is… 0. Odd! But eyeing your list, it is pretty clear we have different “coding interests”. Although I have to admit that 2 or 3 of the books you highlight seem pretty interesting!

    Ruben

  31. It’ looks useful.Thanks

  32. Great List, I really want to check out the Pro Linq book

  33. I think your books suit a C# programmer 🙂 .

    For other programmers, they may prefer “The Productive Programmer” or “The Pragmatic Programmer” or “Getting Real” , sort of…

  34. Aravind says:

    Silverlight? Sucks to be you dude.

  35. Brad says:

    @Jesse Liberty
    The list is appearing for me now. Thanks!

  36. Ian Smith says:

    @Jesse Liberty Good point. It HAD been on “Forthcoming” list from my computer book supplier, but now I’ve checked again and it’s gone, which is a real shame.

  37. @Alfredo De Regil
    Please let me know if you can see the list now that it is not in a scripted widget.

    Thanks.

  38. @Ian Smith
    I love Jeff’s book and it would certainly be on the list except that as far as I can see there won’t be an edition for Expression 4.

    For that matter, there are many other books that are not on this list simply because I don’t happen to be familiar with them.

  39. Raghuraman says:

    Jesse,

    Thank you for this interesting list.

    I believe C# in Depth by Jon Skeet might be a good addition to the List.

    Also am looking forward to “Silverlight in Action”, “Essential Linq” and “Essential WCF” books in the List.

    Regards

    KRK

  40. Interesting, clearly some folks can see this list and others cannot. As soon as I can I will convert this to a simple table.

  41. Alfredo De Regil says:

    I do not see any list. I have tried with Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox.

  42. Dave Evans says:

    +1 for not having the

  43. terry says:

    No list can be seen here. Win XP FF 3.6.8

  44. Ian Smith says:

    I have to ask: Why do you keep the “Foundation Expression Blend” book close to hand? It’s not a reference book, it’s a tutorial. It was written to an early beta so has huge chunks of out of date and misleading information. It’s missing important stuff (there’s stuff promoted on the back cover that’s not even in the book) One chapter has a huge section that is almost an exact cut and paste copy of the previous chapter, the editing on the book has been so poor.

    So I have to ask again, what is it about the book that makes it a “must keep within reach”? When books like “Silverlight in Action”, “Silverlight Unleashed”, “Pro Silverlight 3” or (for Blend) Jeff Paries “Silverlight Animation with Blend” AREN’T on your list I’m totally confused by the inclusion of this book when other so much better books apparently haven’t made the grade.

  45. Brian S says:

    I have a “done, but with errors on page”, using Windows 7 Pro x64 with IE 8, version 8.0.7600.16385.

    Thanks

  46. John Papa says:

    What! No Silverlight books? 🙂

  47. Mark Rendle says:

    Are you asking for suggestions or have you accidentally omitted the list?

    • The list is a widget from Amazon and may take a couple seconds to load. If you don’t see it, however, please do let me know and please tell me your browser and OS.

      Thanks!

  48. Brad says:

    Where is the list?

Comments are closed.