TLDR; Advanced Industrial Automation

TLDR; exists to save you time in reading. In this case, I feel it appropriate to tell you to order this book if you are new to the field or simply have to deal with anyone new to the field. If this is too little for you to read, please continue.

Advanced Industrial Automation: PLC Programming in the Simplest Way with 100 solved examples is my favorite type of book. It is cheap (Kindle edition going at $3.99 as of February 2025), it is aimed at beginners and it focuses on what really matters.

It walks through the basic tasks of writing code:

1. Get the narrative

2. List the I/O

3. List the memory

4. Write the truth table (or equivalent)

5. Write the logic

Examples are listed in detail. I would argue the majority of this book is actually code, rather than text. It is ladder too, which means it is really a fairly concise read. You can work through any number of these in classes or in interview questions. I wish I had this book prior to my last few training classes. I feel the examples would have worked much better.

If you are looking for a fancy book that you can copy paste into your presentation, this is not for you. Typos exist, some symbols are drawn by hand. However, if you (or your trainee) read this book and cannot write and interpret fairly common logic by the end, it is 100% the reader's fault.