[ 2005-August-07 18:16 ]

This is the classic reference on the best practices for writing software. It focuses on low-level details that you never thought could need so much thought. For example, McConnell spends over fifty pages discussing how to layout code. As obvious as some of the topics seem, I learned something from every chapter. This book is 13 years old at this point, but surprisingly it is still very relevant. The revised second edition is probably worth a look, at the very least since you will not have to read examples in Fortran or Pascal.