What Michael Feathers Thinks You Should Read

Reviewed by Greg Wilson / 2011-08-24
Keywords: Noticed

Michael Feathers is the author of one of our favorite books on programming. In February 2009, he posted a list of ten papers that every programmer should read at least twice:

  1. On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules: David Parnas
  2. A Note On Distributed Computing: Jim Waldo, Geoff Wyant, Ann Wollrath, Sam Kendall
  3. The Next 700 Programming Languages: P. J. Landin
  4. Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?: John Backus
  5. Reflections on Trusting Trust: Ken Thompson
  6. Lisp: Good News, Bad News, How to Win Big: Richard Gabriel
  7. An experimental evaluation of the assumption of independence in multiversion programming: John Knight and Nancy Leveson
  8. Arguments and Results: James Noble
  9. A Laboratory For Teaching Object-Oriented Thinking: Kent Beck, Ward Cunningham
  10. Programming as an Experience: the inspiration for Self: David Ungar, Randall B. Smith

His reasons for picking these papers over tens of thousands of others are well worth reading as well. What would you add to the list? What would you replace if the list had to stay 10 items long?