43 Books for Developers and Development Teams

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We review some of the most interesting books relating to app development, design, mobile technology and broader business thinking.

Books, books and more books

We asked our team to recommend some of their favourite books.

We were expecting a few half-hearted suggestions of old Beano annuals and scruffy student copies of Lord of the Flies. However, it turns out our team are quite the keen readers.

We'll try to add to this list in the coming months but at present it stands at a reputable library of 43 titles. Peruse and enjoy.

Andy's Books (the MD)

As you can see my selection of books are perhaps focused more towards the directors, entrepreneurs and bright-eyed dreamers. The dominant themes are; efficiency, innovation and management.

If I were to pick one book from this selection as a 'must read' it would have to be Good To Great. It's a masterpiece in business wisdom that's applicable to everyone from CEOs at FTSE100s to budding entrepreneurs, and even faithful team players.

Good To Great - Jim Collins (Amazon)

Eat That Frog! - Brian Tracy (Amazon)

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable - Seth Godin (Amazon)

Remote: Office Not Required - David Heinemeier Hansson (Amazon)

Flow: The Psychology of Happiness - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Amazon)

Innovation’s Dirty Little Secret: Why Serial Innovators Succeed Where Others Fail - Larry Osborne (Amazon)

Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action - Simon Sinek (Amazon)

Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future - Peter Thiel & Blake Masters (Amazon)

Alistair, Chris & Nick's books (the Android Developers)

We got our heads together to come up with our defintive list of dev books. This selection includes all the fundamental, go-to-guides that any iOS or Android developer could wish for.

Oh, and also I,Robot.

Alistair

Android Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide - Bill Phillips (Amazon)

Chris

Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship - Robert C. Martin (Amazon)

Effective Objective-C - Matt Galloway (Amazon)

Effective Java - Joshua Bloch (Amazon)

Test Driven iOS Development - Graham Lee (Amazon)

Nick

Thinking in Java - Bruce Eckel (Amazon)

Test-Driven Development - Kent Beck (Amazon)

Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code - Martin Fowler (Amazon)

IOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide - Aaron Hillegass and Joe Conway (Amazon)

The C Programming Language - Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie (Amazon)

I, Robot - Isaac Asimov (Amazon)

Josh's books (the Project Manager)

Project Management requires a broad understanding of all parts of our business, plus a specific knowledge of efficient and effective team working. I'm sure this mix comes across in my selection.

Without a doubt my 'must have' book in this list is The Lean Startup. An essential read for any new or fast-moving business.

Design Is A Job - Mike Monteiro (Amazon)

You’re My Favorite Client - Mike Monteiro (Amazon)

The Lean Startup - Eric Reis (Amazon)

The Mythical Man-month: Essays on Software Engineering - Frederick P. Brooks Jr. (Amazon)

Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster - Alistair Croll (Amazon)

Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience - Jeff Gothelf (Amazon)

Jotham and Ed's books (the Designers)

I know, I know... We're the designers so therefore our selection should consist solely of comic strips, bizarre books about triangles and photographs of sheep in avant-garde poses.

Well, sorry to confound your stereotypes (we're good at that) but most of these books actually consist of meaningful paragraphs. If we were to pick just one, we'd surely go for Rocket Surgery Made Easy. Pure genius.

Jotham

The Best Interface is No Interface: The Simple Path to Brilliant Technology - Golden Krishna (Amazon)

Designing Products People Love: How Great Designers Create Successful Products - Scott Hurff (Amazon)

Hegarty On Creativity: There Are No Rules - John Hegarty (Amazon)

Ed

Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights - Steve Portigal (Amazon)

How to Make Sense of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everybody - Abby Covert (Amazon)

Just Enough Research - Erika Hall (Amazon)

The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide - Leah Buley (Amazon)

Simple and Usable Web, Mobile, and Interaction Design - Giles Colborne (Amazon)

Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability - Steve Krug (Amazon)

Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-it-yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems - Steve Krug (Amazon)

Cameron and Lionel's books (the iOS Developers)

In addition to the books already listed by our fellow developers above, these 8 are pretty much essential in our iOS world.

Cameron

iOS Programming Pushing the Limits - Rob Napier (Amazon)

NSHipster: Obscure Topics in Cocoa & Objective C - Matt Thompson (Amazon)

The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers - Robert C. Martin (Amazon)

The Pragmatic Programmer - Andrew Hunt (Amazon)

Lionel

Mastering Xamarin.Forms - Ed Snider (Amazon)

Cross-platform UI Development with Xamarin.Forms - Paul F. Johnson (Amazon)

iOS Development with Xamarin Cookbook - Dimitris Tavlikos (Amazon)

Xamarin Forms In Your Pocket - Shawn Green (Amazon)


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