Developing and programming software and applications is never an easy task, and sometimes you need a bit of help, whether it’s for managing your workflow, refreshing your knowledge or learning a new programming language. Thankfully, there are a lot of resources on the Internet that can help, including free ebooks.
Here, we’ve compiled a list of 20 free ebooks that should definitely be of use to beginner software developers and programmers. They cover a decent range of topics, from more general workflow advice to nitty-gritty code and quite a few things in between. Without further ado, here’s the list.
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How To Become A Programmer
By Rob Wailing
The title says it all, really: this ebook should be one of your first reads if you’re just starting out, or even if you’re trying to decide whether programming is the right path for you. It’s not a deep ebook, but the author covers a decent amount of non-technical topics such as where to start, how to gain experience, and other real-world questions.
Available as: PDF
Lean Software Development
By David J. Anderson
This ebook sheds light on how the concept of "Lean", originating from the management structure at Toyota in the 1990s, can be applied to software development. It’s not a book about programming; instead, the ebook discusses how to approach and manage the process of developing software.
Available as: PDF
Back To Basics: Hype-Free Principles For Software Developers
By Jason Gorman
This ebook cuts through a lot of the hype and marketing speak that’s present in the software development world and tries to reintroduce some of what the author thinks are basic tenets of software development. Topics such as the need for testable goals, automating donkey work and the need for customer involvement are all discussed in this ebook.
Available as: PDF
Don’t Just Roll The Dice
By Neil Davidson
This ebook tackles one of the most important parts for any software developer looking to sell their work: pricing. After all, there’s no use writing a great program if you don’t price it correctly; this ebook should help, and discusses issues such as economics, pricing psychology and pricing perception.
Available as: Free download
Programming From The Ground Up
By Jonathan Bartlett
As the title might indicate, this ebook is really aimed at beginners to programming and development, teaching them how to think, write and learn like a programmer. The ebook teaches the principles of programming using assembly language for x86 processors and GNU/Linux operating systems.
Available as: PDF
97 Things Every Programmer Should know – Extended
Compiled by Shirish Padalkar
This ebook is a collection of essays and articles from the 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know wiki that weren’t included in the book. There’s a great variety of contributions in this ebook, discussing a lot of topics ranging from explicit advice with code and programming to more general advice on being a programmer or software developer.
Available as: Pay-what-you-want download
Efficiency in Development Workflows
By Florian Motlik
This ebook shares and discusses the Codeship development team’s workflow in the hope that it will inspire you to also streamline your – or your team’s – own development workflow. The three chapters in the book discuss developing new features, pull requests and code reviews as well as deployment pipelines and zero downtime deployment.
Available as: Email download
Foundations Of Programming
By Karl Seguin
This ebook, as the title suggests, tackles the basic foundations of programming and how to build better software. The author discusses topics such as ALT.NET, domain driven design, unit testing and dependency injection, as well as some simpler "back to basics" topic. Quite a good read to really get to grips with the foundations.
Available as: PDF
Hacknot: Essays On Software Development
By Ed Johnson
This ebook is a collection of essays written between 2003 and 2006, discussing and critiquing various concepts within the field of software development. From extreme programming and agile methods to debugging and maintenance to the software development industry itself, no topic is safe from Ed Johnson’s critical eye.
Available as: Free Lulu download
Programmer’s Motivation For Beginners
By Rajaraman Raghuraman
This ebook is a collection of the author’s blog posts, containing mostly simple and practical advice about being a programmer. There’s no code in here; rather, the author discusses topics such as how to learn programming, thoughtful quotes as well as the attitudes and skills that a good software developer needs.
Available as: Email download
Invent Your Own Computer games With Python
By Al Sweigart
If you’ve been interested in learning Python but never knew how, this ebook is a great place to start. It’s admittedly aimed more towards younger learners, but it’s still a great place to start, especially since it uses the process of making a game as a way to teach you some of the characteristics and intricacies of Python.
Available as: PDF
Learning to Program With Python
By Richard Halterman
This ebook is quite an exhaustive guide to programming with Python 3.2. The author starts with the basics of Python, such as software and development tools, before going into more detailed territory such as Python’s iterative processes, using and writing functions, different types of objects and custom types.
Available as: PDF
Open Data Structures (In Java)
By Pat Morin
This book has a pretty noble goal, giving students free access to an open-source, updatable textbook related to data structures in Java. As you can imagine, the content is geared more towards learners of Java rather than seasoned experts, but it’s likely that even seasoned programmers will get some use out of this textbook, if only as a refresher.
Available as: PDF
F# Succinctly
By Robert Pickering
This ebook is a to-the-point introduction of the F# programming language. The author devotes a few chapters to introducing F#, functional programming and why it’s important, before guiding you through the classic "Hello World!" exercise. Later topics include object-oriented programming, simulations and graphics as well as creating an application in F#.
Available as: Email download
Getting Started With Open Source Development
By Rachna Kapur, Mario Briggs, Pedro Carvalho, Ulisses Costa, Tapas Saha, Raul F. Chong and Peter Kohlmann
This thorough ebook is a great introduction to the world of open source software and issues related to it. Topics discussed include licensing, open source business models, the role of the open source community in development and starting your own open source project.
Available as: PDF
Git Succinctly
By Ryan Hodson
GitHub is one of the most useful version control systems on the Internet right now, and is incredibly important for any software developer. This ebook is a great introduction to how GitHub works, discussing everything you need to know, from a general overview of GitHub to specific topics such as recording and undoing changes and remote repositories.
Available as: Email download
The Rook’s Guide To C++
By Jeremy A. Hansen
This ebook is pretty much a comprehensive C++ textbook that covers all you’d need to know about programming and developing software using C++. Topics discussed include variables, data types and conversion, loops, file I/O and dynamic data. The ebook also includes review questions and answers for each chapter to further aid learning.
Available as: PDF
C++ Succinctly
By Michael McLaughlin
This ebook was written with C# developers in mind. Specifically, it was written to help developers familiar with C# learn C++. It does this by trying to refer to prior C# knowledge as much as possible while it discusses topics such as types, namespaces, resource acquisition and strings.
Available as: Email download
Programming windows Store Apps With HTML, CSS, And Javascript
By Kraig Brockschmidt
This is an essential ebook for anyone developing applications for the Windows Store. All the topics contained, such as the anatomy of Windows apps, web content and data binding, are all discussed in-depth and with great detail. The ebook also comes with companion files to help you with some of the tasks in the book.
Available as: PDF | EPUB | Kindle
.NET Technology Guide For Business Applications
By Cesar de la Torre and David Carmona
This ebook’s main goal is to help you choose the right Microsoft development technologies and approaches for your .NET project. It does this by guiding you through a number of different application patterns and scenarios, with recommended technologies for each pattern and scenario, in order to help you make the right choice.
Available as: PDF
20 Free Ebooks For Software Developers [Beginners]
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