Recommended Books
Programmers are weird. We have an almost entirely computer-situated profession and probably spend about 99% of our time within easy access of the internet, yet ask any programmer if they’d rather have a book or a pdf, we’ll pick the hard copy. Maybe we just like occasionally holding something tangible, or maybe it’s because reading massive amounts of text of a computer screen eventually hurts like heck. None-the-less here’s a nice breakdown of the some my personal bibles:
- Numerical Recipes: Do I need to explain this one? It’s the bible for anything mathematical in programming.
- Game Coding Complete: Another classic written by a true veteran of the pixel mines. Mike McShaffry mixes amusing tales of his amazing career with more wisdom than you can fit into your wisdom teeth and it is glorious.
- Modern C++ Design: Yet another one I feel I don’t need to explain. This is the go-to book for template metaprogramming.
- Game Physics Engine Development: Books on implementing physics engines are a rare commodity, decent books on implementing physics engines a rarer commodity. Say hello to such a commodity.
- Best of Game Programming Gems: Every one of the Game Programming Gems volumes is a bible, a must-have and a classic. Unfortunately, that would be very expensive. This book comes to the rescue by compiling the best of the published volumes into one collection, and it is therefore thy lord.
And just a heads up, many if not all of these assume you kinda know what you are doing already. If you don’t…well, there are better places for you to begin than these books.
