The Art of Readable Code

Appendix A. Further Reading

We created this book by analyzing hundreds of code examples from production code to figure out what works in practice. But we’ve also read many books and articles that helped us in this pursuit.

If you’re interested in learning more, here are some resources you might like. The following lists are by no means complete, but they’re a good place to start.

Books on Writing High-Quality Code

Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, 2nd edition, by Steve McConnell (Microsoft Press, 2004)

A rigorous and well-researched tome on all aspects of software construction, including code quality and more.

Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, by Martin Fowler et al. (Addison-Wesley Professional, 1999)

A great book that talks about the philosophy of incremental code improvements and contains a detailed catalog of many different refactorings, along with steps to take to make these changes with less chance of breaking things.

The Practice of Programming, by Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike (Addison-Wesley Professional, 1999)

Discusses various aspects of programming including debugging, testing, portability, and performance, with various coding examples.

The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master, by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas (Addison-Wesley Professional, 1999)

A collection of many good programming and engineering principles, organized ...