There are a lot of blogs, twitter accounts and personal websites kicking around t’internet.  A lot of these are written by extremely clever ladies and gentlemen that have a real passion for software and want to share this passion with the rest of the world.  This page is my own humble way of paying my respects to these pillars of our software development society.  Long may they continue their good work.

On a similar note, people who aren’t on this list aren’t necessarily in any way inferior to the people I have chosen… they’re just different and simply may not have crossed my line of work.

Martin Fowler

http://martinfowler.com/

https://twitter.com/martinfowler

Mr. Fowler, I salute your broad range of knowledge across software development.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s writing clean, maintainable code, or constructing reusable scalable code, or choices in database technology, this man’s opinions are definitely worth reading.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Refactoring-Improving-Addison-Wesley-Technology-ebook/dp/B007WTFWJ6/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Enterprise-Application-Architecture-Addison-Wesley-ebook/dp/B008OHVDFM

Kent Beck

https://twitter.com/KentBeck

Mr. Beck feels like a little bit of an enigma to me.  I seem to go through phases where no matter what methodology or technology I’m looking at, his name seems to crop up - but this isn’t the sign a jack of all trades… it’s an indication of the wealth of knowledge and deep understanding of his subject material across a wide range of topics.  Mr. Beck, for your insight into TDD and Agile development in particular, thank you.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Test-Driven-Development-Addison-Wesley-Signature/dp/0321146530

“Uncle” Bob Martin

https://twitter.com/unclebobmartin

“The first rule of functions is that they should be small.

The second rule of functions is that they should be smaller than that.”

Mr. Martin is a phenomenal ambassador for writing clean code that’s simple to read and maintain.  Code that you can debug today and in five years time.  If you ever get the chance to attend one of his talks, jump at the opportunity… you might learn something you never knew in the first few minutes…

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software-Craftsmanship/dp/0132350882/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Software-Development-Principles-Patterns-Practices/dp/0132760584/

Jim Webber

http://jimwebber.org/

https://twitter.com/jimwebber

I think it’s fair to say that if there’s one thing that’s missing from software development compared to other industries and roles, it’s charisma.  Software developers typically don’t have charisma.  Dr. Webber bucks this trend in a massive way… if you ever get a chance to attend one of his talks, be prepared for a treat, he is an immensely intelligent person, passionate about the message he’s trying to convey and so animated you don’t want to talk to stop.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/REST-Practice-Hypermedia-Architecture-Parastatidis/dp/B00EKYW230

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Graph-Databases-ebook/dp/B00EHQMHEA

Jon Skeet

http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/

https://twitter.com/jonskeet

I’d love to say that what Mr Skeet doesn’t know about C# can be written on the back of a postage stamp… but I can’t.  There’s just nothing to write.  This guy is more likely to find a bug in the C# compiler then he is in his own code.  Now a deserved legend on www.stackoverflow.com, where he is prepared to help anyone at any time.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/C-Depth-Jon-Skeet/dp/161729134X/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-World-Functional-Programming-Tomas-Petricek/dp/1933988924

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