A curated, opinionated list of best-in-class books for modern software development, popular programming languages, and AI/ML.
Awesome DevBooks is a project by DevTools Directory — a community hub for developer tools, resources, and curated lists. Find us on GitHub.
- Software Engineering Essentials
- Architecture, Data & Distributed Systems
- System Design
- Computer Science Foundations
- Testing & Quality
- DevOps, CI/CD & Infrastructure
- Security
- Version Control
- Programming Languages
- Frontend & Web Development
- Mobile Development
- Data Engineering
- AI / Machine Learning
- Career, Communication & Engineering Culture
- Further Reading
- Related Projects
- Contributing
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| The Pragmatic Programmer (20th Anniversary Ed.) | Andrew Hunt & David Thomas | Practical habits, thinking tools, and engineering instincts that age incredibly well. |
| Code Complete (2nd Ed.) | Steve McConnell | The "how to write good code" encyclopedia: construction, readability, and craft. |
| Clean Code | Robert C. Martin | Principles and examples for writing code that stays readable under pressure. |
| Clean Architecture | Robert C. Martin | Core architectural ideas for keeping systems maintainable as they grow. |
| A Philosophy of Software Design (2nd Ed.) | John Ousterhout | A sharp counterpoint to Clean Code — argues for deep modules and against over-decomposition. |
| Refactoring (2nd Ed.) | Martin Fowler | The classic playbook for improving design without changing behavior. |
| Working Effectively with Legacy Code | Michael Feathers | How to add tests and make changes safely in scary, untested codebases. |
| Design Patterns | Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides | The OG patterns catalog — treat it as vocabulary, not dogma. |
| Fundamentals of Software Architecture | Richards & Ford | Practical, modern guide to architecture styles, trade-offs, and the architect's role. |
| The Mythical Man-Month | Frederick P. Brooks Jr. | Timeless lessons on why software schedules explode and what to do about it. |
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Designing Data-Intensive Applications | Martin Kleppmann | The go-to guide for storage, streams, consistency, and real-world system trade-offs. |
| Domain-Driven Design | Eric Evans | Modeling complex domains and aligning code with business reality. |
| Implementing Domain-Driven Design | Vaughn Vernon | The practical companion to the "big blue book" — DDD with actual code. |
| Release It! (2nd Ed.) | Michael T. Nygard | Stability patterns and failure-mode thinking for production systems. |
| Site Reliability Engineering | Beyer, Jones, Petoff, Murphy | Reliability principles, SLOs, toil reduction, and operating at scale — free online. |
| The SRE Workbook | Beyer, Murphy, Rensin, Kawahara | Hands-on companion to the SRE book with real implementation examples — free online. |
| Kubernetes: Up & Running (3rd Ed.) | Hightower, Burns, Beda | A practical mental model for Kubernetes and container orchestration. |
| Building Event-Driven Microservices | Adam Bellemare | How to design and build event-driven systems at scale using streaming platforms. |
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| The Art of PostgreSQL (2nd Ed.) | Dimitri Fontaine | Advanced SQL and PostgreSQL features through real application examples. |
| PostgreSQL: Up and Running (3rd Ed.) | Regina Obe & Leo Hsu | A friendly, practical introduction to PostgreSQL for application developers. |
| MongoDB: The Definitive Guide (3rd Ed.) | Shannon Bradshaw et al. | Comprehensive coverage of MongoDB for developers and operations. |
| Redis in Action | Josiah Carlson | Data structures, patterns, and real use cases for Redis beyond simple caching. |
Essential reading for building production-grade systems — and for navigating technical interviews.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| System Design Interview – Vol. 1 (2nd Ed.) | Alex Xu | The most practical intro to system design with clear frameworks and real examples. |
| System Design Interview – Vol. 2 | Alex Xu & Sahn Lam | Deeper dives: Google Maps, ad click aggregation, stock exchange, and distributed message queues. |
| The System Design Primer | Donne Martin | Free, comprehensive GitHub guide covering scalability, reliability, and trade-off thinking. |
These books don't expire. Invest in them once and they pay dividends forever.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| SICP | Abelson, Sussman & Sussman | Abstraction, interpreters, and "how to think like a programmer" at a deep level — free online. |
| Introduction to Algorithms (CLRS, 4th Ed.) | Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein | The standard reference for algorithms and data structures. |
| The Art of Computer Programming | Donald E. Knuth | The deep end of algorithms, analysis, and programming elegance. |
| Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective (3rd Ed.) | Bryant & O'Hallaron | What's actually happening under your code: memory, caching, linking, concurrency. |
| Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces | Arpaci-Dusseau & Arpaci-Dusseau | OS fundamentals explained with unusual clarity — free online. |
| Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (8th Ed.) | Kurose & Ross | The standard networking text — TCP/IP, HTTP, DNS, and how the internet actually works. |
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Test-Driven Development: By Example | Kent Beck | TDD from the inventor of TDD — walks through the process step by step with real code. |
| Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests | Freeman & Pryce | The best book on TDD in practice, showing how tests shape real architecture. |
| The Art of Unit Testing (3rd Ed.) | Roy Osherove | Practical patterns for writing tests that are maintainable and trustworthy. |
| Software Engineering at Google | Winters, Manshreck, Wright | How Google thinks about testing, code review, maintainability, and scale — free online. |
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| The DevOps Handbook (2nd Ed.) | Kim, Humble, Debois, Willis, Forsgren | The definitive guide to DevOps transformation: flow, feedback, and continuous learning. |
| Accelerate | Forsgren, Humble, Kim | Data-driven proof of what actually makes software delivery faster and more reliable. |
| Continuous Delivery | Humble & Farley | The foundational book on CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, and release confidence. |
| Infrastructure as Code (3rd Ed.) | Kief Morris | Principles and patterns for managing cloud and server infrastructure with code. |
| Terraform: Up & Running (3rd Ed.) | Yevgeniy Brikman | Hands-on Terraform for real-world infrastructure automation. |
| The Phoenix Project | Kim, Behr, Spafford | A novel that makes DevOps principles viscerally real — essential culture reading. |
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Serious Cryptography (2nd Ed.) | Jean-Philippe Aumasson | Cryptography concepts explained for engineers who need to use it correctly. |
| The Web Application Hacker's Handbook (2nd Ed.) | Stuttard & Pinto | Practical web security testing and attack/defense thinking. |
| Hacking: The Art of Exploitation (2nd Ed.) | Jon Erickson | Low-level security from first principles: buffer overflows, shellcode, and network exploits. |
| The Tangled Web | Michal Zalewski | A deep and honest look at how browsers and the web work — and why security is hard. |
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Pro Git (2nd Ed.) | Scott Chacon & Ben Straub | The most readable Git book, from basics to power-user workflows — free online. |
Python has one of the richest programming book ecosystems of any language, and for good reason — it spans beginners writing their first script all the way to engineers building distributed ML systems. The books below are the best of that spectrum: Python by Example and Python Crash Course get you coding confidently from day one, Fluent Python and Effective Python make you truly fluent in the language's idioms and internals, and Architecture Patterns with Python and High Performance Python take you into production-grade territory. Together they form a complete path from first line to senior engineer.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Python by Example | Dariush Abbasi | A practical, example-driven guide to learning Python — clear explanations and real coding tasks, great for building intuition fast. |
| Python Crash Course (3rd Ed.) | Eric Matthes | Best beginner book — projects-first, clear, and up to date with Python 3.11+. |
| Fluent Python (2nd Ed.) | Luciano Ramalho | Idiomatic Python: data model, iterators, concurrency, typing, and best practices. |
| Effective Python (3rd Ed.) | Brett Slatkin | Sharp, practical items for writing clean, correct, modern Python. |
| Architecture Patterns with Python | Percival & Gregory | DDD, ports & adapters, and event-driven architecture in Python — free online. |
| High Performance Python (2nd Ed.) | Gorelick & Ozsvald | Profiling, optimization, concurrency, and making Python fast when it needs to be. |
JavaScript is the only language that runs natively in every browser on the planet, and that ubiquity has spawned a remarkably deep body of literature. The challenge isn't finding a JS book — it's finding ones that teach the language honestly rather than glossing over its genuinely strange parts. The books here do exactly that: Eloquent JavaScript builds real understanding from the ground up, You Don't Know JS Yet goes deep on the mechanics most developers never fully grasp, and Programming TypeScript gives you the type-level tools to scale JavaScript into large, reliable codebases. Pair any two of these and you'll understand JavaScript better than most working professionals.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Eloquent JavaScript (4th Ed.) | Marijn Haverbeke | Best "learn JS by understanding it" book — updated for modern JS, free online. |
| You Don't Know JS Yet (2nd Ed.) | Kyle Simpson | Deep dive into JS mechanics: scope, closures, prototypes, types, and async — free online. |
| JavaScript: The Good Parts | Douglas Crockford | Slim, sharp, still essential for understanding the language's quirks and pitfalls. |
| Programming TypeScript | Boris Cherny | How to scale JS codebases with TypeScript's type system and patterns. |
| Node.js Design Patterns (3rd Ed.) | Casciaro & Mammino | Patterns, best practices, and idioms for serious server-side Node.js development. |
Java's longevity — over 30 years and still powering much of the world's enterprise infrastructure — has produced a small canon of genuinely great books that have stood the test of time. Effective Java is the consensus best book on any object-oriented language, not just Java. Java Concurrency in Practice remains unmatched for writing safe concurrent code, even as the language has evolved. Modern Java in Action bridges the gap to Java 17+ idioms, and Spring in Action covers the framework that most production Java systems actually run on. Read them in order and you'll write Java that senior engineers respect.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Effective Java (3rd Ed.) | Joshua Bloch | The definitive guide to writing robust, idiomatic Java. |
| Java Concurrency in Practice | Brian Goetz et al. | The classic on writing safe and scalable concurrent Java code — still unsurpassed. |
| Modern Java in Action (2nd Ed.) | Urma, Fusco, Mycroft | Lambdas, streams, modules, reactive, and records — the Java 17+ way to write code. |
| Spring in Action (6th Ed.) | Craig Walls | The definitive practical guide to the Spring ecosystem. |
Go's philosophy is deliberate simplicity — small language, fast compiler, opinionated tooling — and its best books reflect that ethos. The Donovan & Kernighan classic covers the language thoroughly and remains the clearest introduction to Go's concurrency model. Learning Go brings it up to modern idioms for developers arriving from Python or JavaScript. 100 Go Mistakes is the most efficient way to level up after the basics: a clear catalog of the patterns that trip up even experienced Go developers. These three books together are all you need to write professional, idiomatic Go.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Boring Go! | Hassan Aminfar | If you’ve ever felt that Go’s simplicity is a feature—not a limitation—Boring Go! puts words, examples, and confidence behind that instinct. |
| The Go Programming Language | Donovan & Kernighan | Clear, thorough coverage of Go from core language to concurrency. |
| Learning Go (2nd Ed.) | Jon Bodner | Modern, idiomatic Go for developers coming from other languages — updated for Go 1.21+. |
| 100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them | Teiva Harsanyi | A catalog of real Go pitfalls with clear explanations and fixes. |
| Powerful Command-Line Applications in Go | Ricardo Gerardi | Build real CLI tools in Go — great for systems and DevOps developers. |
Rust's ownership model is genuinely unlike anything in other mainstream languages, which means most developers need to unlearn before they can learn. The books below are carefully sequenced for that journey. The Rust Programming Language (universally called "the book") is one of the best official language guides ever written — free, clear, and comprehensive. Programming Rust goes deeper for real systems work, and Rust for Rustaceans takes you into advanced territory once the fundamentals click. Zero to Production is the practical capstone: building a real production API end-to-end, where all the theory becomes concrete.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| The Rust Programming Language (2nd Ed.) | Klabnik, Nichols & contributors | The best first-principles introduction to Rust — free online. |
| Programming Rust (2nd Ed.) | Blandy, Orendorff, Tindall | Practical, detailed Rust for real systems work. |
| Rust for Rustaceans | Jon Gjengset | Idiomatic Rust for developers ready to go beyond the basics. |
| Zero to Production in Rust | Luca Palmieri | Build a production-ready backend API from scratch — the best "real project" Rust book. |
C and C++ sit at the foundation of almost everything in computing — operating systems, compilers, databases, game engines, embedded systems — and their best books reflect that depth and weight. K&R's The C Programming Language is one of the finest technical books ever written: 272 pages that explain more than most 800-page volumes. For C++, Scott Meyers' Effective Modern C++ remains the clearest guide to writing safe, performant code with the modern language features, and Stroustrup's Tour of C++ gives you an authoritative overview of the whole language in compact form. These aren't weekend reads — they're references you'll return to for years.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| The C Programming Language (2nd Ed.) | Kernighan & Ritchie | The classic C text — short, sharp, and foundational. |
| Effective Modern C++ | Scott Meyers | Best practices for C++11/14 and "how to stop hurting yourself." |
| C++ Primer (5th Ed.) | Lippman, Lajoie, Moo | A thorough, structured path through modern C++. |
| A Tour of C++ (3rd Ed.) | Bjarne Stroustrup | A concise, expert overview of modern C++ from the creator of the language. |
C# has evolved faster than almost any other mainstream language over the past decade — nullable reference types, records, pattern matching, async/await, source generators — and its literature has kept pace. Jon Skeet's C# in Depth is the gold standard for understanding why the language works the way it does, not just how to use it. Stephen Cleary's concurrency cookbook is the most practical guide to async programming patterns that C# developers face daily. Together with a current reference like Mark Price's comprehensive guide to .NET 8+, these three books cover C# from its design principles through modern production patterns.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| C# in Depth (4th Ed.) | Jon Skeet | The book for understanding the why behind C# features — not just syntax. |
| Concurrency in C# Cookbook (2nd Ed.) | Stephen Cleary | Practical patterns for async, parallel, and reactive C# code. |
| C# 12 and .NET 8 | Mark J. Price | Comprehensive, up-to-date coverage of modern C# and the .NET ecosystem. |
Kotlin has become the dominant language for Android development and a serious contender on the JVM server side, offering a modern, expressive alternative to Java with full interoperability. Its book ecosystem is compact but high quality. Kotlin in Action — written by two JetBrains engineers who designed the language — is the authoritative starting point, covering the language idioms and patterns you'll actually use. Effective Kotlin is the natural follow-up: a distillation of what writing production Kotlin well actually looks like, item by item. Two books; more than enough to be confident in the language.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Kotlin in Action (2nd Ed.) | Jemerov & Isakova | Practical Kotlin with the patterns you'll actually use on real projects. |
| Effective Kotlin (2nd Ed.) | Marcin Moskala | Best practices and idioms for writing clean, safe, maintainable Kotlin. |
Swift is Apple's language for the entire Apple platform — iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS — and since its introduction in 2014 it has matured into a genuinely elegant, safe, and performant language. The official Swift book from Apple is unusually good for official documentation: clear, current, and always kept up to date with new language releases. Swift in Depth goes further, covering generics, protocol-oriented design, and the advanced patterns that distinguish fluent Swift from translated Objective-C. The Big Nerd Ranch iOS guide rounds it out with the best hands-on project-based learning for building real apps.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| The Swift Programming Language | Apple | The official, free, and continuously updated guide to Swift — always current. |
| Swift in Depth | Tjeerd in 't Veen | Goes beyond syntax to cover generics, protocols, and idiomatic Swift patterns. |
| iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (7th Ed.) | Keur & Hillegass | The most practical hands-on guide to building real iOS apps. |
Ruby is a language designed above all for developer happiness — expressive, flexible, and famously elegant — and its best books capture that spirit while building serious engineering depth. Sandi Metz's Practical Object-Oriented Design is required reading regardless of which language you work in: it uses Ruby to teach OOP more clearly than any other book in any language. The Well-Grounded Rubyist is where you go to truly understand how Ruby works under the hood — objects, blocks, closures, and the metaprogramming that makes Rails possible. The Pickaxe (Programming Ruby 3.2) is the definitive reference once you need to go deeper.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| The Well-Grounded Rubyist (3rd Ed.) | Black & Leo III | The best "understand Ruby deeply" book — objects, blocks, modules, and metaprogramming. |
| Practical Object-Oriented Design (2nd Ed.) | Sandi Metz | Uses Ruby to teach OOP clearly — one of the best object-oriented design books for any language. |
| Programming Ruby 3.2 (5th Ed.) | Thomas, Fowler, Hunt | The definitive Ruby reference — "the Pickaxe." |
Elixir sits on top of the Erlang VM — one of the most battle-tested runtimes for fault-tolerant, distributed systems ever built — and brings a modern, Ruby-influenced syntax to that proven foundation. It's the best language available for building systems that must stay up, handle concurrency gracefully, and recover from failure automatically. Dave Thomas' Programming Elixir is the joyful introduction the language deserves. Saša Jurić's Elixir in Action takes you into OTP, processes, and real production architecture. And Programming Phoenix shows how it all comes together in web applications with real-time features that would be painful to build anywhere else.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Programming Elixir 1.6 | Dave Thomas | The best starting point for Elixir's functional and concurrent programming model. |
| Elixir in Action (3rd Ed.) | Saša Jurić | Production-grade Elixir: OTP, concurrency, and building real fault-tolerant systems. |
| Programming Phoenix 1.4 | McCord, Tate, Valim | Building real-time web apps with Phoenix and LiveView — collaborative app development at its best. |
Scala is the most ambitious language on the JVM: it fuses object-oriented and functional programming into a single, expressive type system, and it runs on the Java runtime with full interoperability. That ambition makes it powerful and also genuinely demanding to learn well. Programming in Scala — co-authored by the language's creator, Martin Odersky — is the authoritative guide and the right place to start. Functional Programming in Scala is one of the finest FP books ever written in any language: rigorous, demanding, and transformative for how you think about code. The Scala Cookbook fills in the practical day-to-day gaps that the theory books leave open.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Programming in Scala (5th Ed.) | Odersky, Spoon, Venners | The authoritative Scala guide, co-authored by the language creator. |
| Functional Programming in Scala (2nd Ed.) | Chiusano & Bjarnason | Learn FP rigorously from the ground up using Scala — demanding but transformative. |
| Scala Cookbook (2nd Ed.) | Alvin Alexander | Practical, recipe-driven solutions for everyday Scala development. |
PHP powers a remarkable share of the web — WordPress, Wikipedia, Facebook's original stack — and despite its reputation, modern PHP is a genuinely capable, well-designed language. The challenge is that there is a vast amount of outdated PHP code and outdated PHP advice floating around the internet, making good books especially valuable here. Josh Lockhart's Modern PHP is the essential reset: it shows what PHP actually looks like written well in 2026 with modern tooling. Matt Zandstra's PHP Objects, Patterns and Practice builds the object-oriented and design-pattern foundation that serious PHP work requires. Laravel: Up & Running covers the framework that defines professional PHP web development today.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Modern PHP | Josh Lockhart | Brings PHP into the modern era: namespaces, traits, generators, Composer, and best practices. |
| PHP Objects, Patterns and Practice (6th Ed.) | Matt Zandstra | OOP, design patterns, and professional PHP workflows. |
| Laravel: Up & Running (3rd Ed.) | Matt Stauffer | The definitive practical guide to building modern applications with Laravel. |
Functional programming is less a language and more a way of thinking — one that makes programs easier to reason about, test, and compose. These books are language-agnostic in spirit even when they use a specific language as their vehicle. Haskell is the natural home for pure FP learning because it enforces the discipline that other languages only encourage, and Learn You a Haskell is the most enjoyable entry point the language has. Category Theory for Programmers goes deeper into the mathematical structures that underlie all of functional programming. Scott Wlaschin's Domain Modeling Made Functional is the sleeper hit of the list: it applies FP and DDD to real business problems in F# with unusual clarity, and its lessons transfer to any language.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! | Miran Lipovača | The most fun intro to Haskell and pure functional thinking — free online. |
| Haskell Programming from First Principles | Allen & Moronuki | A rigorous, beginner-friendly path through Haskell and type theory. |
| Haskell for Imperative Programmers | Philipp Hagenlocher (2024) | Written specifically for developers arriving from OOP/imperative backgrounds — practical and grounded. |
| Category Theory for Programmers | Bartosz Milewski | The mathematical foundations underlying functional programming — free online. |
| Domain Modeling Made Functional | Scott Wlaschin | DDD and functional design in F# — invaluable even if you never write F#. |
The command line is the universal interface of software development — every language, every platform, every server. Developers who are fluent at the shell move faster, debug more effectively, and automate repetitive work that slows everyone else down. The Linux Command Line is the best starting point: methodical, clear, and free online. Once you're comfortable there, sed & awk opens up serious text processing power, and Classic Shell Scripting covers the portability and reliability patterns that distinguish production scripts from quick hacks. These aren't glamorous books — but they pay dividends every single day.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| The Linux Command Line (2nd Ed.) | William Shotts | The best introduction to Bash and the Unix philosophy — free online. |
| sed & awk (2nd Ed.) | Dougherty & Robbins | Deep mastery of the two most essential Unix text-processing tools. |
| Classic Shell Scripting | Robbins & Beebe | Real-world shell scripting patterns for portability and reliability. |
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| CSS: The Definitive Guide (5th Ed.) | Meyer & Weyl | The most comprehensive and current CSS reference — covers Grid, Flexbox, and custom properties. |
| Every Layout | Pickering & Bell | Reframes CSS layout as composable, algorithmic design primitives — changes how you think about CSS. |
| HTTP: The Definitive Guide | Gourley et al. | Deep understanding of HTTP — essential for every web developer. |
| Web Performance in Action | Jeremy Wagner | Practical techniques for making real-world websites significantly faster. |
| Web Scalability for Startup Engineers | Artur Ejsmont | Pragmatic guide to scaling web architecture from day one through millions of users. |
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (7th Ed.) | Keur & Hillegass | The most practical hands-on guide to building real iOS apps with Swift and UIKit. |
| SwiftUI by Tutorials (5th Ed.) | Kodeco Team | Project-driven SwiftUI development covering the full modern iOS stack. |
| Android Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (5th Ed.) | Phillips, Stewart, Hardy | The definitive hands-on guide to Android development in Kotlin. |
| Jetpack Compose by Tutorials (2nd Ed.) | Kodeco Team | Project-based guide to building modern Android UIs with Jetpack Compose. |
| Flutter in Action | Eric Windmill | Cross-platform mobile development with Flutter and Dart — one codebase for iOS and Android. |
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Fundamentals of Data Engineering | Reis & Housley | The first comprehensive book on the data engineering lifecycle — pipelines, storage, and serving. |
| Streaming Systems | Akidau, Chernyak, Lax | How streaming works at a deep level — windows, watermarks, and exactly-once semantics. |
| Data Pipelines with Apache Airflow | Harenslak & de Ruiter | Practical Airflow for orchestrating real-world data workflows. |
| The Data Warehouse Toolkit (3rd Ed.) | Kimball & Ross | The foundational guide to dimensional modeling — bedrock of analytical data design. |
| Spark: The Definitive Guide | Chambers & Zaharia | Comprehensive guide to Apache Spark for large-scale data processing. |
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (4th Ed.) | Russell & Norvig | The classic survey of AI: agents, search, logic, probability, and learning. |
| Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning | Christopher M. Bishop | Core probabilistic ML foundations with a Bayesian viewpoint — free online. |
| The Elements of Statistical Learning (ESL, 2nd Ed.) | Hastie, Tibshirani, Friedman | Deep statistical learning theory — a reference you'll keep returning to — free online. |
| An Introduction to Statistical Learning (ISLR, 2nd Ed.) | James, Witten, Hastie, Tibshirani, Taylor | Friendlier, applied companion to ESL — the best first stats-ML book — free online. |
| Mathematics for Machine Learning | Deisenroth, Faisal, Ong | Linear algebra, calculus, and probability as actually used in ML — free online. |
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Deep Learning | Goodfellow, Bengio, Courville | The deep learning reference text — free online. |
| Hands-On Machine Learning (3rd Ed.) | Aurélien Géron | Practical ML with end-to-end projects using modern Python tooling — updated for TF2/Keras 3. |
| Deep Learning with Python (2nd Ed.) | François Chollet | Intuitive deep learning from the Keras creator — partially free online. |
| Natural Language Processing with Transformers (Revised Ed.) | Tunstall, von Werra, Wolf | Modern NLP and transformer workflows with Hugging Face and hands-on examples. |
| Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction (2nd Ed.) | Sutton & Barto | The RL classic, from bandits to policy gradients — free online. |
| Generative Deep Learning (2nd Ed.) | David Foster | Practical generative modeling: VAEs, GANs, diffusion, and transformers. |
⚡ The fastest-moving section of the list. These books reflect how AI is actually being built in production in 2025–2026.
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| AI Engineering | Chip Huyen (2025) | The definitive guide to building production AI systems with LLMs — foundation models, RAG, fine-tuning, agents, and evals. Start here. |
| Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch) | Sebastian Raschka (2024) | Builds a GPT-style LLM step by step in PyTorch — the best way to truly understand what's inside any model. |
| The LLM Engineering Handbook | Iusztin & Labonne (2024) | End-to-end guide for shipping LLM applications: RAG, vector search, prompt chaining, fine-tuning, evals, and LLMOps. |
| Prompt Engineering for LLMs | Berryman & Ziegler (2024) | Systematic prompt engineering from two core GitHub Copilot engineers — treats prompts as first-class engineering artifacts. |
| Designing Multi-Agent Systems | Victor Dibia (2025) | Framework-agnostic guide to building reliable AI agent systems: orchestration patterns, memory, evaluation, and failure modes. |
| Generative AI Design Patterns | Cihan Biyikoglu (2025) | 32 reusable patterns for RAG, reasoning chains, multi-modal systems, and agentic architectures. |
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| Designing Machine Learning Systems | Chip Huyen | End-to-end ML system design: data, training, deployment, monitoring, and iteration. |
| Introducing MLOps | Treveil, Sharif & Meissner | Practical MLOps: model versioning, drift detection, and CI/CD for ML pipelines. |
| Feature Engineering for Machine Learning | Alice Zheng & Amanda Casari | How to transform raw data into features that actually improve model performance. |
| Book | Author | Why Read It |
|---|---|---|
| The Staff Engineer's Path | Tanya Reilly | How to grow as a technical leader without becoming a manager — highly practical. |
| Staff Engineer | Will Larson | Real stories and frameworks from engineers who made it to Staff and beyond. |
| The Manager's Path | Camille Fournier | A technical leader's guide from tech lead to CTO — worth reading even if you never want to manage. |
| An Elegant Puzzle | Will Larson | Engineering management systems: team design, hiring, incident management, strategy. |
| Peopleware (3rd Ed.) | DeMarco & Lister | The argument that most software failures are social, not technical — still disturbingly accurate. |
| The Clean Coder | Robert C. Martin | Professionalism, estimates, pressure, and how to behave when things go wrong. |
| Software Engineering at Google | Winters, Manshreck, Wright | How Google thinks about maintainability, testing, and operating at scale — free online. |
| Thinking in Systems | Donella Meadows | Systems thinking fundamentals — applies to codebases, teams, and organizations alike. |
Curated book lists that go deeper on specific topics:
| List | Description |
|---|---|
| AI Books | Broad coverage of AI, ML, and deep learning books and resources. |
| GoBooks | Large, curated collection of Go books, tutorials, and learning resources. |
| JavaScript Books | Books and learning resources for JavaScript. |
| PostgreSQL Books | Books and guides for PostgreSQL. |
| Python Books | Python books, tutorials, and learning materials. |
| Free Programming Books | The largest curated list of free programming books across every language and topic. |
Other curated lists from DevTools Directory and the AI for Developers community:
| Project | Description |
|---|---|
| Awesome DevTools | A curated list of the best developer tools across every category — editors, debuggers, productivity, and more. |
| Awesome Cloud | The best cloud platforms, services, and infrastructure tools for developers and DevOps. |
| Awesome AI Coding Tools | Curated list of AI-powered coding assistants, code generators, and developer copilots. |
| Awesome VibeCoding | Resources, tools, and guides for the emerging vibe coding movement — building with AI as a co-pilot. |
PRs are welcome! When adding a book, please:
- Keep the table format consistent with existing sections.
- Prefer official or free links when available.
- Write a one-line description that explains why it's worth reading, not just what it covers.
- Note the edition and year if it matters — especially for fast-moving topics like AI.
- For the AI Engineering section, always include the publication year since the field moves quickly.