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.
Jurgen Appelo is Chief Information Officer at ISM eCompany (www.ism.nl), recently rated as the #1 fastest growing technology company in The Netherlands. He leads a horde of 50 software developers, development managers, project managers, consultants, quality assurance managers, service managers and kangaroos, some of which he hired accidentally. Jurgen is a DZone MVB and is not an employee of DZone and has posted 17 posts at DZone.
