Which Programming Books Would You Buy If you got 100$ to Spend?

Hello Guys, it's time to take a hypothetical question in Javarevisited. I love books and I have so many in my library and on my phone but this time, I am asking for your recommendations. Which programming book, would you love to buy, if you are given 100$ to spend? I know, when it comes to buying, people want the worth of their money, and that's why I am posting this question to you guys. Suppose you are looking for some books in a bookstore and suddenly salesman comes and say, at this particular minute, we are giving you 100$ FREE to buy any programming book.

Now you have got only 10 minutes to complete your purchase and take away those awesome Java books absolutely for FREE, what are the books you are going to buy?

Remember you can only buy books, whose total price must not exceed 100$, you can buy one book or a combination of multiple books.

For the sake of price you can consider prices given at Amazon for Java books paperback edition, remember you need to consider the price of paperback edition and not eBook.

Also, you are free to buy any programming or software engineering book, not just limited to Java or related technology.

Talking about myself, I would love to spend my 100$ on buying the following books, Though I wanted to buy more, I ran out of time while choosing the last book, so that I can include the first two.

• Clean Code By Robert C. Martin $37.58
• Effective Java 3rd Edition (49% discount)  $27.84
• Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems $23.99 
• Total $89.86            

You can post your choice of book as a comment, and I will choose the best combination of books out of them, which fits on 100$ and post it here.

P.S. If you really want to play this like a game, only take 10 minutes to finalize your books and try to use every cent.

Recommended Programming Books from Community

Thanks for your comments guys. From all the comments, we can see a pattern while buying a programming book for reading, most of the suggestions are for books that are timeless, classic and can be read even down the years.

Obviously, in this category, Algorithm and data structures tops, followed by books on Object-oriented programming, best practices, and software engineering.

Following is the list of some of the classic programming books, suggested by our readers in the comments section.

You can also use this list to buy your next programming books when you have $100 to spare

1. Algorithm Unlocked by Thomas Corman, 

Suggested by Atif is a good compilation of complex algorithm in an easy to read format. It's written by Thomas Corman, which has already authored and a co-authored lot of books on data structure and algorithm space. On top of that, it's really cheap, just $22.50

2. Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis in Java, 

Suggested by Suresh, is a bit expensive costing around $123, but worth of money if you would like to learn data structure and algorithms in Java programming language.

3. Algorithm Design Manual by Steven Skiena 

Suggested by Gaurav Dubey, which costs around $82 but again given the importance of the subject in programming, I think it's worth every penny.

4. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software 

This book is suggested by one of the Anonymous readers. This book is already 18 years old, first released in the mid-1990s, but still relevant and will remain effective, given the popularity of object-oriented language in the enterprise world. It cost around $47.99.

5. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code 

By Martin Fowler is another timeless classic suggested by @Pratap, This book is also on my wishlist and next in my reading queue. Cost is around $44.70

I found these books, which deserves a place in Java programmers bookshelf. I am a big fan of the paperback edition of books because that gives me a real feeling of reading books, but given the iPad and Amazon Kindle advantage of carrying a large number of eBooks in your bag, I have started building my eBook shelf as well.

By the way, It's hard to get time to read programming books, but if you have the desire to learn and continuously improve yourself, you will definitely find at least half an hour daily or a couple of hours in a week to read programming books.

Btw, you can buy a lot more Programming courses at $100, particularly on Udemy, where you can get top quality 200$ courses for just $10, yup that's right just $10. I was also surprised and couldn't believe but now I know it's true and that's why I buy a lot of useful programming courses from Udemy during their sales.

If I have got $100 to buy Programming and Software development courses then I would buy the following evergreen courses which one can use throughout their career:

• The Complete Python Bootcamp by Jose Portilla
• The Complete Java Masterclass by Tim Buchalaka
• Learn Linux in 5 Days and Level Up Your Career
• Design Pattern in Java
• Data Structures and Algorithms: Deep Dive Using Java
• The Complete SQL Bootcamp Become an expert at SQL!

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All the best with your learning journey.