10 programming books any moderately competent programmer should have read:
Code Complete
The Pragmatic Programmer
C Programming Language (2nd Edition)
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
The Mythical Man-Month
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
Head First Design Patterns
Programming Pearls
Effective Java (2nd Edition) or Effective C++
Test Driven Development: By Example
Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time
by Howard Schultz, Dori Jones Yang – Amazon
Howard Schultz grew up the hard way in the tough neighborhoods of Brooklyn, NY and went on to lead Starbucks from a small local coffee shop with 4-5 outlets in Seattle to a nationwide chain in North America that is rapidly expanding in the US and beyond.
Its a classic rags to riches story..inspiring, motivating. The story blends in several themes that run concurrently throughout most of the book:
It can be argued that Starbucks has not succeeded at a some of the “differentiators” it set out to achieve. I have been to several Starbucks outlets in the US. All stores do look more or less the same. At this stage, Starbucks is probably closer to the national chains than to a local coffee shop, though Howard absolutely hates comparisons with Walmart. But they do try a lot of things to stay different..which is to be appreciated.
The book is well written..supposedly one of the better business biographies. I see two problems with it. First, no attempt is made at being objective and considering the other side of the story. A few honest interviews with randomly chosen baristas would have added tremendous credibility to Howard’s words. Second, the book does become a bit repetitive towards the end. Howard is clearly passionate about Starbucks’ philosophy and mission. However repeating it throughout the book wears the reader down. A couple of times would have been enough.
Recommended read.. with a cup of coffee at your nearby Starbucks 
4/5
The Google Resume: How to Prepare for a Career and Land a Job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, or any Top Tech Company by Gayle Laakmann McDowell (280 pages)- Amazon
Gayle is the founder of Career Cup, which seems to be the go to website for all interview/job hunting preparations among my fellow CS students. I haven’t been there yet but after reading this book it seems I should take a look. Her other book “Cracking the coding interview” also seems worth a look.
Gayle has interned/worked at some big name companies such as Microsoft and Google and also worked as a recruiter. In this book she gives you a road map starting right from what kind of courses/internships/activities to do in college right up to negotiating job offers.
Some of the questions you’ll see dealt with in the book are:
The book has some good insights and tips/tricks from her years of experience with the whole process of tech recruiting. Its pretty easy to read too.
However, at the end of the day it all boils down to just two words “Be good”. If you are good, then “ideally” none of the things in the book should matter that much. How you write your cover letter and what you put in your resume will not prevent you from getting any job you want.
But that’s for the “good” people. For the rest of the folks, this book will be a push in the right direction.
4/5
more book reviews coming up…
blink: the power of thinking without thinking
by malcolm gladwell (amazon) – 
320 pages
Well.. i guess everyone has read this book by now.. i am reading it for the second time.. after a couple of years…. if you haven’t, do read it… its a short and very interesting read.
Summary: an attempt to note some of the interesting insights in this book…
what is blink?
- decisions made in the *blink* of an eye are as good as those made after a long thought process
- all of us possess this ability to make snap decisions.. and indeed all of us do make such decisions on a daily basis..
- “thin slicing” is taking decisions based on a very limited amount of information, and in a really short time… and the slices can be really thin.. as some examples in the book show..
- there is a time gap between “unconsciously taking a decision and acting on it”… and then “realizing what we are doing”
- though we are able to make such decisions, and they turn out to be good, we do not know how we make them..we can’t explain our actions… so there is a little bit of mystery over there
the dark side of blink
- however, this rapid cognition is not all good, there is a bad side to it.. it can sometimes lead us astray… the decisions we take in a blink do involve some rapid fire processing behind the scenes, that involves all our learning, observations over the years… a problem occurs when we bypass this processing while making a quick decision.. we get so influenced by some particular aspect of the problem at hand, that we ignore the processing altogether in the decision making.. gladwell calls this the “warren harding error”
- the warren harding error is the cause of our usual prejudices, preconceptions about things,… to know your unconscious better, try some of the IAT tests here.
what can we do about the dark side?
- though we don’t know much about our unconscious, we can surely try to influence it.. so if you have a stronger association between males and career as opposed to family, try thinking about some female CEOs and business leaders… your male-career association will be slightly reduced…
setting the stage for blink
- though decisions can be made in a blink, they do require a lot of groundwork… only after a doctor has seen hundreds of cases, can they make a snap decision about a new patient
- for effective snap decisions, it is crucial to have little but vital information about the problem at hand… an information overload causes the paralysis of analysis and reduces the quality of decisions significantly
The book is interesting/informative indeed, as with any of Gladwell’s books.
There have been a lot of critical reviews on amazon, and i agree with them in that the book gets too anecdotal.
3/5
a fine balance by rohinton mistry (wikipedia, amazon) – 624 pages
”Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft armchair, 
you will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have
read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well,
blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild
exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is
not a fiction. All is true.”
— Honoré de Balzac
This quote best describes ‘a fine balance’.. its a tale of great misfortunes.. indeed the misfortunes are so great that the it borders on exaggeration.
Set in the late 1970s, there are four main characters in the book… Dina Dalal, Ishvar Darji, his nephew Omprakash Darji and Maneck Kohlah…. though they come from different backgrounds, all of them have one thing in common.. which is their misfortune. Long lasting happiness eludes all of them. There are brief interludes of seemingly normal, happy life here and there… but they are all brief… the misfortune shadows everything.. like dark clouds on a rainy day.
Mistry is brutally honest.. describing in rich detail, every aspect of the misfortunes.. which makes the book even more depressing.
But for those who have lived all their lives in comfort, its a vital reminder of the other side of the story… an unfortunate existence which millions of people struggle with each day… there are more poor people in India, than those in the 25 poorest African countries taken together… they tend to be forgotten somewhere in the glitz and glamor of bollywood, the outsourcing industry and the middle class… this is their story.
This is an important work. A must read for those who have been out of touch with reality.. which is very easy in urban India these days. Its not easy, getting through the 600+ pages when the gloom never seems to end, but a must-read precisely because of that.
Highly recommended.
5/5
In the Pond by Ha Jin (192 pages) Amazon
I wanted to read something about the life in China for a while and this seemed like a good 
way to start.
The book is slim, you can get through in a day or two… very simple and engaging… it tells the story of Shao Bin.. an artist, who is forced to work in a factory… Shao Bin is passed over during allotment of company provided accommodation.. and doesn’t take it lying down.. he resorts to his art to get back at his managers at the factory.. what follows is a good satire..
planning to read more of Ha Jin’s books
4/5
