Ask HN: Programming books that are desk worthy? (reference material)

13 points·TbobbyZ··14 comments

I'm looking to buy some new programming books and I'm not sure to go just digital or hardcopy.

General programming or ones specific for what stack you work with.

Desk Worthy to me is a good reference guide. Other good books that I don't need at arm's reach then are "shelf-worthy."

Heres a couple Deskworthy ones: tyling with CSS by Charles Wyke-Smith - very quick reference to grab to get some CSS point clarified. The Visual Quickstart HTML guide is good too also for quick reference.

No desk would be complete without the C programmer's K&R C.

Also, C: A Reference Manual by Samuel P. Harbison and Guy L. Steele Jr.

Clean code by Robert Martin if you're an application developer.

This was in my Amazon cart before my original post!

1.) The Pragmatic Programmer 2.) The Passionate Programmer 3.) 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know

Code Complete 2

This was in my Amazon cart before my original post too!

Java Concurrency in Practice is an example of a nice go-to book if you're into that

Programming in Ruby;1.9 & 2.0. Dave Fowler et al aka Pickaxe book

Foundations of Multidimensional and Metric Data Structures

Hanan Samet

What exactly is meant by desk-worthy?

Ones worth keeping by your desk either for your own reference or for handing out to anyone who is interested.

Alternately if your company has a library, ones you'd recommend for inclusion there.

Couldn't have said it better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com