The best of the non-obese technical books?

Question

I have a bias towards the slim ones. (I am talking about technical books here ;-). By slim I mean the books I can read lying on the couch. That would approx to the books with no more than 400 pages I guess. GoF's design patterns has more pages, though I consider it as slim. I think you got the idea.

Some of the best books I have read are the slim ones (Effective C++, Practices of an agile developer, etc.). They are cheap to buy, doesn't take too much real estate on my modest book shelf, takes less time to read, and usually I believe I learn more from them than from their heavy weight counterparts.

I agree there are some outstanding books out there which are huge (Code Complete for example). Those are the rare cases.

I am interested to know your favorite slim technical books.

Answer 1

Pragmatic Programmer FTW!

Answer 2

Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley

Answer 3

The Book, of course! "C Programming Language" (2nd Edition) (Prentice Hall Software) by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie

Answer 4

The C Programming Language (K&R)

Answer 5

Effective C#

Answer 6

What's your page limit? These are slim for me and great reads - although not purely technical:

The Art of Agile Development - James Shore (~400pages) The Art of Project Management - Scott Berkun (~475 pages)

Answer 7

Visual C# 2005: A Developer's Notebook
Liberty, Jesse
221 Pages
$29.95
ISBN: 0-596-00799-X

Answer 8

Aaron totally agree, more broadly +1 for any Scott Berkun book

Answer 9

Effective C#: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#
Wagner, Bill
307 Pages
$39.99
ISBN: 0-321-24566-0

Looks like the "More Effective C#..." for 2008 is due out soon! I'll have to order that one too...

Answer 10

The Mythical Man Month.

Answer 11

If you're into Java, then Effective Java by Joshua Bloch is a great pick. It's relatively thin (384 pages) compared to other books that are around, and for its size, it has very valuable information and is well-written.

While we're on Java and not-so-thick books, I'll throw in Java Puzzlers by Joshua Bloch and Neal Gafter (312 pages). Definitely perfect for a little bit of reading on the couch and a good book to exercise your mind.

But for non-obese technical books in general, I'd also cast my vote for The Pragmatic Programmer.

Answer 12

The Unix Programming Environment

C Traps and Pitfalls

Higher Order Perl

Hacker's Delight

Most O'Reilly books

And everything else mentioned on this page

Answer 13

K&R for sure. I've been making my way through On Lisp (by Paul Graham) recently and its been really good, even though I don't do much lisp programming, there is still plenty to be gained from it.

Answer 14

I no particular order:

• Effective Java, 2nd Edition: this one help me program with Java, not against it.
• Java Concurrency in Practice: this book introduced me to common & less common concurrency traps.
• Effective C++ / More Effective C++ / Effective STL: can reading about C++ secrets be more fun? If you are depressed or want to learn C++ inside out, read these books!
• The Pragmatic Programmer: full of insight about being a programmer.
• Joel On Software: idem.
• Refactoring: changed the way I code! Programming became so much simpler & less frightening.

Answer 15

For Delphi Developers The Object Pascal Book that comes in the box, not the developers guide.

Answer 16

Since others have already mentioned K&R and the Pragmatic Programmer and several others from the must have library, I'll throw in a language specific book - JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford. It weighs in at only 170 or so pages. Very good for highlighting the more elegant aspects of the language.

Answer 17

Beautiful Code is a great one I haven't seen mentioned here yet. It's not exactly slim, but as a compilation of short essays is very well-suited to couch reading.

Answer 18

Expert C Programming : Deep C Secrets

Answer 19

The Agile developer and many others from Pragmatic bookshelf.

The Productive Programmer is the best i have read in recent years.