What is the single most influential book every programmer should read

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If you could go back in time and tell yourself to read a specific book at the beginning of your career as a developer  which book would it be   I expect this list to be varied and to cover a wide range of things   To search  Use the search box in the upper-right corner  To search the answers of the current question  use inquestion this   For example   inquestion this  Code Complete

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Agile Software Development by Alistair Cockburn

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Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert L  Glass http   www codinghorror com blog images facts-and-fallacies-of-software-engineering jpg  Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert L  Glass is a really excellent book  I had been a professional hacker for almost 10 years before I read it  and a I still learned a ton of stuff

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How to think like a computer scientist  learning with python  May not be the most advanced book on the world but it made me understand programming concepts that I couldn t  especially object oriented topics

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In no particular order except how they re arranged on my bookshelf    The Pragmatic Programmer Rafactoring by Fowler Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Feathers  This is practically a companion volume to Refactoring  UML Distilled by Fowler  Among its other virtues is brevity  Debugging the Development Process by Steve Maguire Design Patterns  aka  Gang of Four   by Gamma et al

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Debugging the Development Process  Practical Strategies for Staying Focused  Hitting Ship Dates  and Building Solid Teams by Steve Maguire   No-non-sense  down-to-earth  entertaining  profound

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Advanced Programming in the UNIX environment - W  Richard Stevens

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Deitel and Deitel   C    How to Program   XUnit Test Patterns

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Algorithms in C   was invaluable to me in learning Big O notation and the ins and outs of the various sort algorithms   This was published before Sedgewick decided he could make more money by dividing it into 5 different books    C   FAQs is an amazing book that really shows you what you should and shouldn t be doing in C     The backward compatibility of C   leaves a lot of landmines about and this book helps one carefully avoid them while at the same time being a good introduction into OO design and intent

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Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment by W  Richard Stevens

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Object Oriented Design Heuristics is a great read   I couldn t put it down

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Peter Norton s Assembly Language Book for the IBM PC  I had spent countless nights in front of the pc  DOS   exploring unknown worlds  -D

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How to Solve it by computer http   g-ecx images-amazon com images G 01 ciu 31 89 d4ac024128a044c186a18010  AA207  L jpg - R G Dromey

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This one isnt really a book for the beginning programmer  but if you re looking for SOA design books  then SOA in Practice  The Art of Distributed System Design is for you

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The Pragmatic Programmer  From Journeyman to Master without a doubt  The advice in it is so well presented  and simple  that it comes across as if it was  The Common Sense Programmer   Love it

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Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass

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Discrete Mathematics For Computer Scientists http   ecx images-amazon com images I 51HCJ5R42KL  SL500 BO2 204 203 200 AA219 PIsitb-sticker-dp-arrow TopRight -24 -23 SH20 OU02  jpg  Discrete Mathematics For Computer Scientists by J K  Truss   While this doesn t teach you programming  it teaches you fundamental mathematics that every programmer should know  You may remember this stuff from university  but really  doing predicate logic will improve you programming skills  you need to learn Set Theory if you want to program using collections   There really is a lot of interesting information in here that can get you thinking about problems in different ways  It s handy to have  just to pick up once in a while to learn something new

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Steve Macguire s Writing Solid Code

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Adding to the great ones mentioned above   Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture  Enterprise Integration Patterns

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Dreaming in Code Has probably had the most profound impact in the last 6 months

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Lean Software Development by Mary and Tom Poppendieck is definitely one for every developers bookshelf

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Effective C   and More Effective C   by Scott Myers

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Mr Bunny s Guide to ActiveX

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Here are two I haven t seen mentioned  I wish I had read  Ruminations on C    by Koenig and Moo much sooner   That was the book that made OO concepts really click for me  And I recommend Michael Abrash s  Zen of Code Optimization  for anyone else planning on starting a programming career in the mid 90s

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Not the most influential  but worth a look is Youth by J M Coetzee   The narrator of Youth  a student in the South Africa of the 1950s  has long been plotting an escape from his native country  from the stifling love of his mother  from a father whose failures haunt him  and from what he is sure is impending revolution  Studying mathematics  reading poetry  saving money  he tries to ensure that when he arrives in the real world  wherever that may be  he will be prepared to experience life to its full intensity  and transform it into art  Arriving at last in London  however  he finds neither poetry nor romance  Instead he succumbs to the monotony of life as a computer programmer  from which random  loveless affairs offer no relief  Devoid of inspiration  he stops writing  An awkward colonial  a constitutional outsider  he begins a dark pilgrimage in which he is continually tested and continually found wanting   youth cover http   img440 imageshack us img440 5140 youthgd4 jpg

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Extreme Programming by Kent Beck

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Design Concepts in Programming Languages by FA Turbak produces detailed implementations of many programming concepts and is very useful for understanding what s going on underneath the hood

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I found the The Algorithm Design Manual to be a very beneficial read  I also highly recommend Programming Pearls

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Inside the C   object model by Stanley Lippman

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Systemantics  How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail  Get it used cheap  But you might not get the humor until you ve worked on a few failed projects   The beauty of the book is the copyright year   Probably the most profound takeaway  law  presented in the book   The Fundamental Failure-Mode Theorem  F F T    Complex systems usually operate in failure mode   The idea being that there are failing parts in any given piece of software that are masked by failures in other parts or by validations in other parts  See a real-world example at the Therac-25 radiation machine  whose software flaws were masked by hardware failsafes  When the hardware failsafes were removed  the software race condition that had gone undetected all those years resulted in the machine killing 3 people

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Etudes for Programmers by Charles Wetherell  More Programming Pearls  Jon Bently

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I m late to this question but apparently still have something unique to offer    Software Engineering Economics by Barry Boehm which  to summarize  says that if you want to really improve software productivity get better people since better tools  hardware  languages  methods  etc  will all have a marginal impact   Only better people drive up productivity by significant amounts   I emphasize  this is better engineers  not more engineers   Not the kind of book you d take to bed with you  like you might do with Coders At Work but the kind of book that drives home a lesson that our industry has struggled mightily to take to heart   Witness off-shoring  a false economy that Boehm s model predicts will have only a marginal positive effect  if any at all   Check it out

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alt text http   ecx images-amazon com images I 61dECNkdnTL  SL500 AA240  jpg  C   How to Program It is good for beginner This is excellent book that full complete with 1500 pages

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You Next    Move Your Software Development Career to the Leadership Track   Michael C  Finley  Author   Honza Fed  k  Author   link text

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Peter Coulton -- you don t read Knuth  you study it   For me  and my work    Purely Functional Data Structures is great for thinking and developing with functional languages in mind

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I suppose we could ask the same top rated question every couple of weeks and upmod all those who mention code complete or The Pragmatic Programmer    Not that there is anythng wrong with it  -

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The Productive Programmer by Ford  I m not quite through this one yet  but I m already thrilled by some of the tips tricks I ve picked up to become more   well   productive   Sure  there s plenty of the stuff we all already know  use the keyboard shortcuts  DRY  etc    But there s plenty of new stuff to go with it   And careful readers will quickly start to see how things can be combined for even greater effect

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Working Effectively with Legacy Code is a really amazing book that goes into great detail about how to properly unit test your code and what the true benefit of it is   It really opened my eyes

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Read Head First Design Patterns for a much more accessible introduction than the GoF book   I remember feeling like I d leveled up after each chapter   Kent Beck s Test Driven Development by Example for TDD

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Maverick   The Success Story Behind the World s Most Unusual Workplace   alt text http   ecx images-amazon com images I 410TX7YN94L  SL500 AA300  jpg  Will make you realise what a workplace should be like

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It seems most people have already touched on the some very good books  One which really helped me out was Effective C   50 Ways to Improve your C   I d be remiss if I didn t mention The Tao of Pooh  Philosophy books can be good for the soul  and the code

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Craig Larman s Applying UML and Patterns   While the Gang of Four book Design Patterns is very instructive  I found that I didn t  get  how to use design patterns until I ran across Larman s book in a programming class

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Game Architecture and Design  Learn the Best Practices for Game Design and Programming    Even though i ve never programmed a game this book helped me understand a lot of things in a fun way

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Since I m a C  programmer and most generic books already has been mentioned I d like to recommend Bill Wagner s book  More Effective C    I think most people that develop composite WPF-applications also should have a look at Microsoft s Composite Application Guidance  also known as Prism    Composite Application Guidance

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This one started me off into true OOA amp D    Applying UML and Patterns  An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development - Craig Larman  These would be up there as well    Patterns in Enterprise Application Architecture - Fowler  Domain-Driven Design - Eric Evans

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Fortran IV with Watfor and Watfiv by Cress  Dirkson and Graham   This book taught me my first programming language that I programmed onto punch cards at the time  After 3 years  the book was all tatters because I had used it so much    alt text http   g-ecx images-amazon com images G 01 ciu 4b 83 245d9833e7a03768eaf63110  AA240  L jpg  Fortran was a great language  It had a super optimizer and produced very fast code  It is still very popular in Great Britain and FTN95 is now a very full-featured and capable compiler  I sometimes wish I could have continued to use it  but Delphi is a more than adequate replacement

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This might not count as a  development book  but I have to throw it in anyway  Hackers by Stephen Levy   I found that it spoke to the emotional side of programming

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Inside the C   Object Model by Stan Lippman  It made C   finally  click  for me  before it was all  magic   This book gave me a different frame of mind when approaching a new programming language

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Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications  by Grady Booch  I read this a long time ago and it showed me that there could be a methodology to developing Object Oriented Software  Since then many other books have had an impact on me but this one got me started

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Separately  I d mention The Third Manifesto by Hugh Darwen and CJ Date  If you re interested in understanding data  which seems uncommon among programmers  this book is a must-read  It will also make you sad when you realize just how badly broken SQL is  but it ll also help you cope with that brokenness  Knowing how a tool is broken lets you design with those deficits in mind

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hackers  by Steven Levy   The personality and way of life must come first  Everything else can be learned

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One I didn t already see on here was xUnit Test Patterns  Refactoring Test Code by Gerard Meszaros  This book really helped me see unit testing from a fresh perspective

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Managing Gigabytes is an instant classic for thinking about the heavy lifting of information

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Actually  two books stand out  The first was Code Complete  Despite its age  this is still a very useful book  and the chapter on the dangers of premature optimisation is worth the price of the book on its own    The second one was The Psychology of Everyday Things  now called The Design of Everyday Things  I think   which changed the way I think about user interfaces when designing applications  It made me more user-focused

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The Scelbi-Byte Primer  I pored over the source code listings in this book many times until  one day  I suddenly grokked 8080 assembly language programming

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Expert C Programming  Deep C Secrets by Peter Van Der Linden

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The first book that made a real impact on me was Mastering Turbo Assembler by Tom Swan   Other books that have had an impact was Just For Fun by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond and of course The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas

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While not strictly a software development book  I would highly recommend that Don t Make me Think  be considered in this list

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Modern C   Design by Andrei Alexandrescu

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How influential a book is often depends on the reader and where they were in their career when they read the book   I have to give a shout-out to Head First Design Patterns   Great book and the very creative way it s written should be used as an example for other tech book writers   I e  it s written in order to facilitate learning and internalizing the concepts    Head First Design Patterns http   ecx images-amazon com images I 51LSqrgoT1L  SS500  jpg

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Mr  Bunny s Guide To ActiveX

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The Pragmatic programmer was pretty good  However one that really made an impact when I was starting out was    Windows 95 System Programming Secrets   I know - it sounds and looks a bit cheesy on the outside and has probably dated a bit - but this was an awesome explanation of the internals of Win95 based on the Authors  Matt Pietrek   investigations using his own own tools - the code for which came with the book  Bear in mind this was before the whole open source thing and Microsoft was still pretty cagey about releasing documentation of internals - let alone source   There was some quote in there like  If you are working through some problem and hit some sticking point then you need to stop and really look deeply into that piece and really understand how it works   I ve found this to be pretty good advice - particularly these days when you often have the source for a library and can go take a look   Its also inspired me to enjoy diving into the internals of how systems work  something that has proven invaluable over the course of my career   Oh and I d also throw in effective  net - great internals explanation of  Net from Don Box

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Literate Programming by Donald Knuth  it s a great book on code structure

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Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans

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The C   Programming Language  by Bjarne Stroustrup

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Types and Programming Languages by Benjamin C Pierce for a thorough understanding of the underpinnings of programming languages

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I have a few good books that strongly influenced me that I ve not seen on this list so far   The Psychology of Everyday Things by Donald Norman   The general principles of design for other people   This may seem to be mostly good for UI but if you think about it  it has applications almost anywhere there is an interface that someone besides the original developer has to work with  e  g  an API and designing the interface in such a way that other developers form the correct mental model and get appropriate feedback from the API itself    The Art of Software Testing by Glen Myers   A good  general introduction to testing software  good for programmers to read to help them think like a tester i  e  think of what may go wrong and prepare for it   By the way  I realize the question was the  Single Most Influential Book  but the discussion seems to have changed to listing good books for developers to read so I hope I can be forgiven for listing two good books rather than just one

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If you write code in C then Expert C Programming is an eye opener  It has answers to all the things you wondered why it works this way  Peter Van Der Linden has a great writing style and makes arcane concepts very readable  A must read for all C developers

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This is a very rich and useful compilation  however  I am a bit surprised I have not encountered Andrew S  Tanenbaum among the authors  IMO he is one of the best CS professors  and his genius has to do mainly with his extraordinary ability in making rather difficult material accessible to the CS undergraduates  His books  Modern Operating Systems  or Computer Networks might ring a bell  did a wonderful job in providing me with a solid foundation in CS while doing my BS and I highly recommend them  Some other interesting stuff on Tanenbaum  proving his skills go beyond teaching  author of an OS called MINIX - Linus had his fare share of inspiration from it when implementing Linux  Amoeba - distributed OS  Turtle - free anonymous p2p network

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How to Solve It  A new aspect of mathematical method Although not directly related to computer programming but it does teach you the art of problem solving and that s what computer programming is all about

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SQL for smarties

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For me  Memory as a programming concept in C and C    really opened my eyes to how memory management really works  If you re a C or C   developer I consider it a must read  You will defiantly learn something or remember things you might have forgotten along the way   http   www amazon com Memory-Programming-Concept-C dp 0521520436

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As I started out developing in Java  and am still doing so to this very day  I d have to recommend the outstanding work in the field  Mr Bunny s Big Cup o  Java  From the author s blurb   There is simply no better way to learn Java than to have the pineal gland of an expert Java programmer surgically implanted in your brain  Sadly  most HMOs refuse to pay for this career saving procedure  deeming Java to be too experimental  At last there is an alternative treatment for those of us who cannot wait for sweeping health care reforms  Mr  Bunny   s Big Cup O    Java is recommended by n out of ten doctors  where n is any integer you wish to make up to impress an astoundingly gullible public  The book begins with an overview of the book  and quickly expands into the book itself  Just look at the topics covered   Java  In short  MBBCOJ will teach you all you need to know for a successful career in today   s rabbit development environments   The insight into pixels alone would have cut years off my software developing life

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for low level entertainment i would suggest Michael Abrash s i  -Zen of Code Optimization- and ii  -Graphics Programming Black Book- even if you dont do any graphics programming

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Mastery  The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment  by George Leonard  It s about about what mindsets are required to reach mastery in any skill  and why  It s just awesome  and an easy read too

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As so many people have listed Head First Design Patterns  which I agree is a very good book  I would like to see if so many people aware of a title called Design Patterns Explained  A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design    This title deals with design patterns excellently  The first half of the book is very accessible and the remaining chapters require only a firm grasp of the content already covered The reason I feel the second half of the book is less accessible is that it covers patterns that I  as a young developer admittedly lacking in experience  have not used much    This title also introduces the concept behind design patterns  covering Christopher Alexander s initial work in architecture to the GoF first implementing documenting patterns in SmallTalk   I think that anyone who enjoyed Head First Design Patterns but still finds the GoF very dry  should look into Design Patterns Explained as a much more readable  although not quite as comprehensive  alternative

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Nobody seems to have mentioned Stroustup s The C   Programming Language which is a great book that every C   programmer should read   I also think that Extreme Programming Explained  Embrace Change should be read by every programmer and manager  Many of the ideas in the book are common knowledge now but the book gives an intelligent and inspiring account of the pursuit of quality in software engineering   I would second the recommendations for Knuth and Gang of Four which are classics

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Schaum s Outline of Programming with C   by John R Hubbard   This was the first programming book I read  when I started out with C    It was gifted to me by someone who saw my interest in programming  The book is very good for beginners - it started from the elementary concepts  went up to templates and vectors  The examples given were pretty relevant  The book made you ponder and ask more questions  and try out things for yourself

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I have a couple of  rather old  blog posts on this subject   http   www spindriftpages net blog dave 2005 11 17 c-books  http   www spindriftpages net blog dave 2005 06 06 good-oo-books  http   www spindriftpages net blog dave 2005 05 11 really-great-it-books  Although a good book I found Code Complete to be rather a dull read  a controversial view I admit   I like Jeffery Richter and the books Joel Spolksy has written The Eric Meyer CSS books are really good too

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Coder to Developer  by Mike Gunderloy

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Win32 Programming by Charles Petzold

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Three books come to mind for me    The Art of Unix Programming by Eric S  Raymond  The Wizardry Compiled by Rick Cook  The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth    I also love the writing of Paul Graham

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Programmer s Guide to the IBM PC  The Pink Shirt book       well  someone had to say it

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The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks http   en wikipedia org wiki The Mythical Man-Month

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Software Tools by Brian W  Kernighan and  P  J  Plauger by a wide margin had the most effect on me

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There are a lot of votes for Steve McConnell s Code Complete  but what about his Software Project Survival Guide book  I think they re both required reading but for different reasons

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I read most of the books having an high score on this question - but not all of them  thanks God    and I added the others one to my Amazon Wish List right away     Someone should create a list on Amazon for these books    Maybe a list named    Stackoverflow best books ever    Anyone know how to do that     To me  the best book ever has been Code Complete  It was a revelation  I bought the 2nd edition in english and then in French and I still think it should be a mandatory reading in any computer science school  Data structure is cool but Code complete  no joke  is much more  important     Then  my second best book was Writing Solid Code - having learn how to be understood  it was great to know how to write solid code   Then a lot of very nice books but no one to mention here  Until 2001  I think   Framework Design Guidelines  Conventions  Idioms  and Patterns for Reusable  NET Libraries  A jewel   I read this book many times and it s still on my desk  just beside my LCD  along with Code Complete  really     I Love the way it has been written  love the comment that has been added here and there - books should all be written like that     But well  I forget the very first great books I ve read   The ones who make me love computer science  with passion     Compute   C64 magazine - Will never forget Jim Butterfly  o  Borland C   User Guides  the old ones  circa 1991  those who tried to introduce object oriented programming  very nicely written   Most Microsoft Developpement Tools User Guides  circa 1990-1995  Don t know who were writing them  but they was pretty cool   I remember reading them late in the night  on saturdays      Well  excellent question  o

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The Design and Evolution of C    by Bjarne Stroustrup  Besides giving much background on C    it is also a lengthy study on the trade-offs and design concerns involved in a large scale program   BN com

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This isn t a direct answer to the question  because I feel it s already been answered above  however  one of the books that definitely had an impact on how I code is Code Reading  Volume 1  The Open Source Perspective     alt text http   g bookpool com covers 405 0201799405 140 30O gif

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All the Thinking in    books   Bruce Eckel is THE genious of pedagogy  It s so easy to understand the implementation of polymorphism in C    It contains all that you should known about C    basic and advanced concepts  Way better than the Stroustrup s   I learnt Java with him too   And last but not the least   The C   one is free    http   www mindview net Books TICPP ThinkingInCPP2e html

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97 Things Every Programmer Should Know  alt text http   ecx images-amazon com images I 51F134Q8TrL  BO2 204 203 200 PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click TopRight 35 -76 AA240 SH20 OU01  jpg  This book pools together the collective experiences of some of the world s best programmers  It is a must read

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SAP ABAP programming   Teach Yourself ABAP in 21 Days  is the best book   It contains no clever tricks or wizardry  but after 3 years  I never came upon a more comprehensive book

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Mastering Regular Expressions

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Code is Law - you are doing all this writing  editing  and thinking in  language of your choice  but WHY  What does you code MEAN  What will does it actually DO    I could have recommended a book on QA  but I didn t

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Here s an excellent book that is not as widely applauded  but is full of deep insight  Agile Software Development  The Cooperative Game  by Alistair Cockburn    What s so special about it  Well  clearly everyone has heard the term  Agile   and it seems most are believers these days  Whether you believe or not  though  there are some deep principles behind why the Agile movement exists  This book uncovers and articulates these principles in a precise  scientific way  Some of the principles are  btw  these are my words  not Alistair s     The hardest thing about team software development is getting everyone s brains to have the same understanding  We are building huge  elaborate  complex systems which are invisible in the tangible world  The better you are at getting more peoples  brains to share deeper understanding  the more effective your team will be at software development  This is the underlying reason that pair programming makes sense  Most people dismiss it  and I did too initially   but with this principle in mind I highly recommend that you give it another shot  You wind up with TWO people who deeply understand the subsystem you just built     there aren t many other ways to get such a deep information transfer so quickly  It is like a Vulcan mind meld  You don t always need words to communicate deep understanding quickly  And a corollary  too many words  and you exceed the listener reader s capacity  meaning the understanding transfer you re attempting does not happen  Consider that children learn how to speak language by being  immersed  and  absorbing   Not just language either     he gives the example of some kids playing with trains on the floor  Along comes another kid who has never even SEEN a train before     but by watching the other kids  he picks up the gist of the game and plays right along  This happens all the time between humans  This along with the corollary about too many words helps you see how misguided it was in the old  waterfall  days to try to write 700 page detailed requirements specifications    There is so much more in there too  I ll shut up now  but I HIGHLY recommend this book

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Applying UML and Patterns by Craig Larman   The title of the book is slightly misleading  it does deal with UML and patterns  but it covers so much more  The subtitle of the book tells you a bit more  An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development

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http   ecx images-amazon com images I 519J3P8ANML  SL500 AA240  jpg  Took my programing to a whole new level

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I think that  The Art of Unix Programming  is an excellent book  by an excellent hacker brilliant mind as Eric S  Raymond  who tries to make us understand a few principles of software design  simplicity mainly   This book is a must for every programming who is about to start a project under Unix platform

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In the beginning was the command line  Neal Stephenson

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Professional JSP 2nd Edition   I bough this when I was a complete newbie and took me from only knowing that Java existed to a reliable team member in a short time

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Object Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications by Brady Booch

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Concepts  Techniques  and Models of Computer Programming   alt text http   ecx images-amazon com images I 51YZ50ZR13L  SL500 AA240  jpg

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The Practice of Programming    and  How to solve it by computer  alt text http   img infibeam com img 7101e0ee 496b1 05 629 P-M-B-9788131705629 jpg hei 200 amp wid 160 amp op sharpen 1

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Software Tools by by Brian W  Kernighan and P  J  Plauger  It had a profound influence on how I write software

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In recent years it has been  The C   Standard Library  by  Nicolai M  Josuttis    It s my bible   alt text http   ecx images-amazon com images I 51BT5SKXTCL  SL500 AA240  jpg

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Do users ever touch your code  If you re not doing solely back-end work  I recommend About Face  The Essentials of User Interface Design      now in its third edition  linked   I used to think my users were stupid because they didn t  get  my interfaces  I was  of course  wrong  About Face turned me around

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Thinking in Java  Patterns    Bruce Eckel

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Domain Driven Design By Eric Evans is a wonderful book

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When I first started  there was  Mastering Turbo Pascal  by Tom Swan   There is nothing terribly profound about this book   It was clear and concise with usable examples   Based on this knowledge  I spawned a software development career now 15  years in

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I would say that  Beyond Code - Learn to Distinguish Yourself in 9 Simple Steps  is quite a good and motivational book  I doesn t cover technical issues  but it describes ways of working with people  being professional      For me  this is a book you can read again and again if you are in need of some pep talk  Besides that  it is cheap and very easy and enjoyable to read in 3 to 4 hours   There is a little review over at my blog

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I ve been arounda while  so most books that I have found influential don t necessarily apply today   I do believe it is universally important to understand the platform that you are developing for  both hardware and OS    I also think it s important to learn from other peoples mistakes   So two books I would recommend are   Computing Calamities and In Search of Stupidity  Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters

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Object-Oriented Programming in Turbo C     Not super popular  but it was the one that got me started  and was the first book that really helped me grok what an object was   Read this one waaaay back in high school   It sort of brings a tear to my eye

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A collection it was  and stunning   Edsger Dijkstra s  with some help from C A R  Hoare  little black book Structured Programming and particlarly the essay titled  On Our Inability To Do Much

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Rapid Development by McConnell

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Anything by Edward Tufte  The Visual Display of Quantitative Information  Envisioning Information  Visual Explanations

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I think I grew up in a different generation than most here      One of the most influential books I read  was APUE   Or pretty much anything by W  Richard Stevens

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C   BlackBook  KISS all the way through

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The Algorithms book from Robert Sedgewick  A must-read for application developers   Comes in many flavours  C  C    Java   http   www cs princeton edu  rs

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Advanced MS-DOS by Ray Duncan

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I am surprised there is no mention yet of this book  Starting Forth  by Leo Brodie  After all Forth  being a stack-based language  should fit the audience on this site     Admittedly  Forth is a weird language and not very popular these days  But this book is a joy to read  And it has cartoons  The book  as well as Brodie s other book  Thinking Forth  are both available free on the web

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Graphics Programming in Windows is difficult to fault

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Professional Excel Development This book showed how to make high quality applications within one of the most ubiquitous programming platforms available

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It s not strictly a development book and I believe that I ve mentioned it in another answer somewhere but it s a book I really believe all developers should read  from php to Java to assembly developers   Code  It really brings together what s under the hood in a computer  why memory shouldn t be wasted and some of the more interesting parts of the history of computing  It s an introduction to the computer and what it is  It gave me my ultimate passion for low level programming and helped me understand pointers and memory more than any other computer

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Tenenbaum s first operating systems book  My first look at kernal level programming

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Code Complete  2nd edition  by Steve McConnell The Pragmatic Programmer Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen  Leiserson  Rivest  amp  Stein Design Patterns by the Gang of Four Refactoring  Improving the Design of Existing Code The Mythical Man Month The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth Compilers  Principles  Techniques and Tools by Alfred V  Aho  Ravi Sethi and Jeffrey D  Ullman G  del  Escher  Bach by Douglas Hofstadter Clean Code  A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert C  Martin Effective C   More Effective C   CODE by Charles Petzold Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael C  Feathers Peopleware by Demarco and Lister Coders at Work by Peter Seibel Surely You re Joking  Mr  Feynman  Effective Java 2nd edition Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler The Little Schemer The Seasoned Schemer Why s  Poignant  Guide to Ruby The Inmates Are Running The Asylum  Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity The Art of Unix Programming Test-Driven Development  By Example by Kent Beck Practices of an Agile Developer Don t Make Me Think Agile Software Development  Principles  Patterns  and Practices by Robert C  Martin Domain Driven Designs by Eric Evans The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman Modern C   Design by Andrei Alexandrescu Best Software Writing I by Joel Spolsky The Practice of Programming by Kernighan and Pike Pragmatic Thinking and Learning  Refactor Your Wetware by Andy Hunt Software Estimation  Demystifying the Black Art by Steve McConnel The Passionate Programmer  My Job Went To India  by Chad Fowler Hackers  Heroes of the Computer Revolution Algorithms   Data Structures   Programs Writing Solid Code JavaScript - The Good Parts Getting Real by 37 Signals Foundations of Programming by Karl Seguin Computer Graphics  Principles and Practice in C  2nd Edition  Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel The Elements of Computing Systems Refactoring to Patterns by Joshua Kerievsky Modern Operating Systems by Andrew S  Tanenbaum The Annotated Turing Things That Make Us Smart by Donald Norman The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander The Deadline  A Novel About Project Management by Tom DeMarco The C   Programming Language  3rd edition  by Stroustrup Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture Computer Systems - A Programmer s Perspective Agile Principles  Patterns  and Practices in C  by Robert C  Martin Growing Object-Oriented Software  Guided by Tests Framework Design Guidelines by Brad Abrams Object Thinking by Dr  David West Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment by W  Richard Stevens Hackers and Painters  Big Ideas from the Computer Age The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder CLR via C  by Jeffrey Richter The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander Design Patterns in C  by Steve Metsker Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carol Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M  Pirsig About Face - The Essentials of Interaction Design Here Comes Everybody  The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky The Tao of Programming Computational Beauty of Nature Writing Solid Code by Steve Maguire Philip and Alex s Guide to Web Publishing Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications by Grady Booch Effective Java by Joshua Bloch Computability by N  J  Cutland Masterminds of Programming The Tao Te Ching The Productive Programmer The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick The Career Programmer  Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World by Christopher Duncan Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming  Case studies in Common Lisp Masters of Doom Pragmatic Unit Testing in C  with NUnit by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas with Matt Hargett How To Solve It by George Polya The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho Smalltalk-80  The Language and its Implementation Writing Secure Code  2nd Edition  by Michael Howard Introduction to Functional Programming by Philip Wadler and Richard Bird No Bugs  by David Thielen  Rework by Jason Freid and DHH JUnit in Action

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Whether you are coding in Smalltalk or not Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns is a great read   Full of small observations that will change the way you code  for the better

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I saw a review of Software Factories  Assembling Applications with Patterns  Models  Frameworks  and Tools on a blog talking also about XI-Factory  I read it and I must say this book is a must read  Altough not specifically targetted to programmers  it explains very clearly what is happening in the programming world right now with Model-Driven Architecture and so on

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Refactoring  Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture

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Martin Fowler s Refactoring  Improving the Design of Existing Code has already been listed  But I will detail why it has impacted me   The essence of the whole book is about structuring code so that it is simpler to read and understand by humans  It teaches me strongly that the code that I write is meant for my colleagues and successors to consume and possibly learn something good out of it  It inspires me to consciously program in a manner that leaves people praising my name  and not cursing me to damnation for all eternity

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In addition to other people s suggestions  I d recommend either acquiring a copy of SICP  or reading it online  It s one of the few books that I ve read that I feel greatly increased my skill in designing software  particularly in creating good abstraction layers   A book that is not directly related to programming  but is also a good read for programmers  IMO  is Concrete Mathematics  Most  if not all of the topics in it are useful for programmers to know about  and it does a better job of explaining things than any other math book I ve read to date

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Another book that has not been mentioned yet  and SHOULD be required reading for EVERY programmer  newbies on up to gurus  in ANY programming language  is Michael Howard s Writing Secure Code  2nd Edition  from MSPress

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This is a must read book for every programmer  Database system concepts by Abraham Silberschatz   alt text http   images barnesandnoble com images 14870000 14878097 JPG

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The Fortran Coloring Book  by Dr  Roger Kaufman  1978  ISBN 0262610264   What a silly concept - more basic than even a  Dummies  book   But it works for any language  with a few fortran specific examples of course   explaining the basic concepts of logic  variables  i o  etc  in a very understandable and  Painfully Funny  way   It s enough to get a ten year old interested in programming        Found cover photo on a Flickr user account

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If you are doing anything in Unix Linux MacOS etc  you must read Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment  also known by the acronym APUE   by the late W Richard Stevens  If you don t know how file descriptors work or what sessions are  or all the things you should do when you daemonize yourself  admit it  you don t   then this book will tell you   You ll feel amatuerish for a bit afterwards  but if you want to consider yourself a professional programmer  in any language  in the Unix environment you need to read this

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This last year I took a number of classes  I read  The Innovator s Dilemma  disruptive tech  The Mythical Man Month  managing software  Crossing the Chasm  startup  Database Management Systems  The COW Book Programming C   The OSTRICH Book Beginning iPhone Developmen  The GRAPEFRUIT Book  Each book was amazing but the Innovator s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen  1997     is really a fantastic book  and it got me really thinking about the modern software world  The challenge addressed is disruptive technology  and how disk drive companies and non-technical companies are always disrupted by new  game changing technology  It gives one a new perspective when thinking about Google  probably the biggest  web  company  Why do they have their hands in EVERYTHING  It s because they don t want to have their position disrupted by something new  The preview on google is plenty to get the idea  Read it

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Code Complete is the number one choice  but I d also cite Gang of Four s Design Patterns and Craig Larman s Applying UML and Patterns   The Timeless Way of Building  by Christopher Alexander  is another great one   Even though it s about archtecture  it s included in the bibliography of many great programming books I have already read   Another one  from which I m learning lots of new things  is Data Access Patterns  by Clifton Nock

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Code Craft

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The TCP IP Guide  by Charles M  Kozierok   Although it is described as an  encyclopedic reference   it is incredibly readable as a narrative   This author provides a very   very  very well written  comprehensive  introduction to networking and the infrastructure that underlies the web  Something all programmers ought to know   For me it is the natural follow-on from Charles Petzold s  Code    If  Code  explains to the layman how computers work   The TCP IP Guide  explains how they connect together   If you gave a 12 year old geek a copy  Code  and a copy of  The TCP IP Guide  - they d be building the next Google by the age of 17    In other words  if I could go back in time and tell myself to read a specific book at the beginning of my career as a developer  this  plus Code  is up there in the top of my list

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I m a big fan of most titles by Robert C  Martin  especially Agile Software Development  Principles  and Practices and Clean Code  A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

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The question is   What book really made an impact of how you work as a developer    Without any doubt  Programming Windows with MFC  by Jeff Prosise  is the book that had the greatest impact on HOW I work as a developer   It did not teach me the fundamentals of  programming  but it opened the world of Windows platform development to me and many thousands of other developers   I had written a little Windows code previously in the  Petzold style  before MFC was developed   I quickly decided the Windows platform we just not worth the trouble as a developer   When Prosise came out with his MFC book  I realized  along with thousands of other non-Windows programmers  that I could create an easy to use interface that users would not just understand  but actually enjoy using   I devoured the book  making so many notes in it and turning down so many corners  I eventually bought a second copy     Prosise  Jeff  Programming Windows with MFC 2nd Ed  Microsoft Press 1999 ISBN  1-57231-695-0

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Writing Solid Code  Microsoft s Techniques for Developing Bug-Free C Programs  Microsoft Programming Series   by Steve MacGuire   Interesting what a large proportion the books mentioned here are C C   books

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Probably  C for Dummies  vol 1  back in 1997 or so  Just an introduction really  but it was a good read after having picked up the taste for programming in GFA Basic on the Atari ST  The Coronado C tutorial around the same time helped too

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The Interpretation of Object-Oriented Programming Languages by Ian Craig  Because it showed me how much more there was to OO than standard C   Java idioms

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Essential reading for any mentor team leader manager or anyone who reports to the aforementioned   alt text http   ecx images-amazon com images I 316N6QYW32L  BO2 204 203 200 PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click TopRight 35 -76 AA240 SH20 OU01  jpg

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Solid Code Optimizing the Software Development Life Cycle   Although the book is only 300 pages and favors Microsoft technologies it still offers some good language agnostic tidbits

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Writing Solid Code by Steve Maguire

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Refactoring

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alt text http   ecx images-amazon com images I 51fhwR6eb3L  BO2 204 203 200 PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click TopRight 35 -76 AA300 SH20 OU01  jpg  alt text http   ecx images-amazon com images I 51PDNR3C40L  SL500 AA300  jpg

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Beginning C  3 0  An Introduction to Object Oriented Programming   This is the book for those who want to understand the whys and hows of OOP using C  3 0  You don t want to miss it

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Beginning Visual C    When I first started programming in a OOP languages  I found this book not only to be a comprehensive book about C   and MFC  it was also has one of the best explanations of Object Oriented concepts I ve seen     When I talk to developers who are just starting out programming in an object oriented language  I tell them to read this book

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The Back of the Napkin  by Dan Roam   The Back of the Napkin http   www coverbrowser com image bestsellers-2008 302-7 jpg  A great book about visual thinking techniques   There is also an expanded edition now   I can t speak to that version  as I do not own it  yet

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Learning C  2005  by Jesse Liberty  amp  Brian MacDonald  O Reilly    ISBN 10  0-596-10209-7   When I first made the jump from ASP classic procedural code to object-oriented C  code in VS2005  this book set me on the right path

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Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming  Case Studies in Common Lisp by Peter Norvig    I started reading it because I wanted to learn Common Lisp  When I was halfway  I realized this was the greatest book about programming I had read so far

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One of my personal favorites is Hacker s Delight  because it was as much fun to read as it was educational   I hope the second edition will be released soon

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For me it was Design Patterns Explained it provided an  Oh that s how it works  moment for me in regards to design patterns and has been very useful when teaching design patterns to others

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Applying UML and Design Patterns   It helped design patterns to click with me  and provided a justification for UML that made sense to me in the phrasing  UML as Sketch   Namely that UML should be used as a brief sketch of the system that has the additional benefit of you not having to explain the notation to others  they either already know UML or you give them a UML book to read

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Programming Perl  O Reilly

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PHP objects  patterns and practice   http   www apress com book view 9781590599099

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I ll add a couple that I haven t seen here that are influential for me    Yourdon and Constantine   Structured Design   Everything you need to know about software design is in here  if you re willing to dig for it a little  Leonard Koren   Wabi-Sabi  for Artists  Designers  Poets  amp  Philosophers   A pragmatic philosophy balancing beauty and pragmatism

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What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory  by Ulrich Drepper - explains the structure of modern memory subsystems and suggests how to utilize them efficiently   PS  Sorry If I am double posting

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How to be a Programmer  A Short  Comprehensive  and Personal Summary  by Robert L Read  Not exactly a book but an essay  but this one was definitely an inspiration for me when I got into coding  Loved the notion of entering a tribe  Worth a read

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What happened to  Expert C Programming - Deep C Secrets  by Peter Van Der Linden - a classical and enjoyable read  Should have read that immediately after learning C years ago but got it about after 3 years into learning C  A recommended book which answers the most common SO questions on pointers  a favourite subject of mine   Live it  eat it  breathe it  10 10

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The Unix Programming Environment by Kernighan and Pike       More than any other book  it taught me the benefits in building small  easily-tested tools that can be combined to do big things

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Years ago  Bruce Eckel s Thinking in C   taught me a great deal about C   but also the importance of isolating an issue to a small  sandbox  for study analysis   This technique has greatly impacted my career and routinely helps me troubleshoot problems both for myself and others   These days  I refer to Thinking in Java  which is written in the same style  Somehow  the style is beyond mere  simple  examples  and profoundly gets at the heart of the issue   I am so grateful that I will buy virtually anything by Eckel  sight unseen

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Still a worthwhile classic is the Interface Hall of Shame  This website detailed a huge assortment of interface design faux pas that is quite entertaining  The original iarchitect com no longer exists  but others have re-established the HOS on their own websites

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Mine is Test Driven Development by Example

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K amp R   Juan  I know Juan  I know - but there are some things that can only be learned by actually getting down to the task at hand  Speaking in abstract ideals all day simply makes you into an academic  It s in the application of the abstract that we truly grok the reason for their existence   P   Keith  Great mention of  The Inmates are Running the Asylum  by Alan Cooper - an eye opener for certain  any developer that has worked with me since I read that book has heard me mention the ideas it espouses   1

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recommended for Windows Programmer  Programming Windows

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Database System Concepts is one of the best books you can read on understanding good database design principles

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I think code complete is going to be a hugely popular one for this question  for me it corrected many of my bad habits and re-affirmed my good practices   Also for my Perl background I really like Perl Best Practices from Damian Conway  Perl can be a nasty language if you don t use style and best practices  which is what I was seeing in the scripts I was reading   and sometimes writing      I like the Head First Series  they are quite good and easy to read when your are not in the mood for more serious style books

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C  for Experienced Programmers  or really anything from Dietel  amp  Dietel  I have read several of their books  and everything has been awesome

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to get advanced in prolog i like these two books   The Art of Prolog  The Craft of Prolog  really opens the mind for logic programming and recursion schemes

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While I agree that many of the books above are must-reads  Pragmatic Programmer  Mythical Man-Month  Art of Computer Programming  and SICP come to mind immediately   I d like to go in a slightly different direction and recommend A Discipline of Programming by Edsger Dijkstra  Even though it s 32 years old  the emphasis on  design for verifiability  is highly relevant  even if  verifiability  means  proof  instead  unit tests

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It s a toss up between Head First Design Patterns  for many of the reasons cited above  and Perl Testing  A Developer s Notebook  which should be one of the bibles for any Perl programmer wanting to write maintainable code

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Pragmatic Programmer

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The Python language was very influential to me  I wish I would have read these book years ago  The beauty and simplicity of the Python language really affected how I wrote code in other languages

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My high school math teacher lent me a copy of Are Your Lights Figure Problem that I have re-read many times  It has been invaluable  as a developer  and in life generally

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Enterprise Patterns and MDA  Building Better Software with Archetype Patterns and UML  An excellent read for those looking to leverage ORM and UML

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Donald Norman   The Design of Everyday Things   Not about programming  per se  but about how things in the world should work -- kind of the psychology of usability   It s been invaluable for me in designing both end-user interfaces and APIs

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Pro Spring is a superb introduction to the world of Inversion of Control and Dependency Injection  If you re not aware of these practices and their implications - the balance of topics and technical detail in Pro Spring is excellent  It builds a great case and consequent personal foundation   Another book I d suggest would be Robert Martin s Agile Software Development  ASD   Code smells  agile techniques  test driven dev  principles     a well-written balance of many different programming facets   More traditional classics would include the infamous GoF Design Patterns  Bertrand Meyer s Object Oriented Software Construction  Booch s Object Oriented Analysis and Design  Scott Meyer s  Effective C     series and a lesser known book I enjoyed by Gunderloy  Coder to Developer   And while books are nice     don t forget radio       let me add one more thing  If you haven t already discovered safari - take a look  It is more addictive than stack overflow  -  I ve found that with my google type habits - I need the more expensive subscription so I can look at any book at any time - but I d recommend the trial to anyone even remotely interested    ah yes  a little obj-C today  cocoa tomorrow  patterns  soa  what was that example in that cookbook  What did Steve say in the second edition  Should I buy this book      a subscription like this is great if you d like some continuity and context to what you re googling

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The C   Series of programming books by Deitel and Deitel

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I recently read Dreaming in Code and found it to be an interesting read  Perhaps more so since the day I started reading it Chandler 1 0 was released  Reading about the growing pains and mistakes of a project team of talented people trying to  change the world  gives you a lot to learn from  Also Scott brings up a lot of programmer lore and wisdom in between that s just an entertaining read   Beautiful Code had one or two things that made me think differently  particularly the chapter on top down operator precedence

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OK  so the question is not  what s the best programming book   but  if you could tell yourself what to read in the beginning of your career      Probably one of  On Lisp  and SICP  plus one of CLRS or  Algorithms  a creative approach  by Udi Manber   Introduction to Algorithms by Udi Manber http   vig-fp prenhall com bigcovers 0201120372 jpg  The first two will teach lots of programming techniques  patterns  and really open up one s mind to his her own creativity  the other two are different  They re more theoretical  but also very important  focusing on design of correct and efficient algorithms  and requiring substantially more math    I see lots of people recommending the three first books when the subject of  good programming books  pops up  but the last one  by Manber  is a great book  and few people know it  It s a shame  Manber focuses on the incremental development of algorithms through theorem proving using induction

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Masters of doom  As far as motivation and love for your profession go  it won t get any better than what s been described in this book  truthfully inspiring story

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Implementation Patterns by Kent Beck   alt text http   ecx images-amazon com images I 51JHn-6oNwL  SL500 AA240  jpg  You can learn how to communicate people with programming

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The Practice of programming  by Brian W Kerninghan  amp  Rob Pike   The language is easy and also the subject matter is interesting

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Extreme Programming Explained  Embrace Change by Kent Beck  While I don t advocate a hardcore XP-or-the-highway take on software development  I wish I had been introduced to the principles in this book much earlier in my career  Unit testing  refactoring  simplicity  continuous integration  cost time quality scope - these changed the way I looked at development  Before Agile  it was all about the debugger and fear of change requests  After Agile  those demons did not loom as large

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A Whole New Mind  by Daniel Pink   Interesting take on the future of our industry   I assume most of the folks reading this will have read the books at the top of the list already   So  i ll offer a book that takes a different look at our industry   alt text http   www danpink com images wnm jpg

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An introduction to GW Basic  With out it I never would have learned how to program and any other books wouldn t have done me any good

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Programming from the ground up  It s free on the internet  This book taught me AT amp T asm  It is very easy to read

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Not a programming book  but still a very important book every programmer should read   Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie

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Object-Oriented Software Construction by Bertrand Meyer

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Roger S  Pressman - Software Engineering  A Practitioners Approach   It has got a lot of usefull information

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Michael Abrash  The Zen of Assembly Language

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The New Turing Omnibus http   ecx images-amazon com images I 51HlYd- 2BRwL  BO2 204 203 200 PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click TopRight 35 -76 AA300 SH20 OU01  jpg  Really good book  Has a high-level taste of the most important areas of computer science  Yes  CS    programming  but this is still useful to every programmer

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Perfect Software  And Other Illusions about Testing  TITLE Cover http   ecx images-amazon com images I 51j3BSRspAL  SL500 AA240  jpg  Perfect Software  And Other Illusions about Testing by Gerald M  Weinberg  ISBN-10  0932633692  ISBN-13  978-0932633699

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Object Oriented Analysis and Design - by Grady Booch

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The Art of Game Design - A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell     Jesse Schell has taught Game Design and led research projects at Carnegie Mellon   s Entertainment Technology Center since 2002    Nuff said   The Art of Game Design - A Book of Lenses http   i50 tinypic com iekw0l jpg  PS  Sorry If I am double posting  I couldn t find this book in the answers - either because the title was not exact or there was no image  Let me know and I ll delete it if so

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Thinking in C    by Bruce Eckel

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Amiga ROM Kernel Manuals

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Algorithms in C   1st edition  by Sedgewick taught me all about algorithms as well as teaching me all about the pitfalls of documentation and copy pasting code as all the example code in this version was taken from the  Algorithms in Pascal  version and were simply passed through a simple code translator which did not adjust for the different indexing schemes

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My vote is  How to Think Like a Computer Scientist  Learning With Python  It s available both as a book and as a free e-book   It really helped me to understand the basics of not just Python but programming in general  Although it uses Python to demonstrate concepts  they apply to most  if not all  programming languages  Also  IT S FREE

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alt text http   ecx images-amazon com images I 51E0Ojkz8iL  BO2 204 203 200 PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click TopRight 35 -76 AA300 SH20 OU01  jpg

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Kernighan  amp  Plauger s Elements of Programming Style  It illustrates the difference between gimmicky-clever and elegant-clever

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Agile Software Development with Scrum by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle   I used this book as the starting point to understanding Agile development

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Even though I had been programming rofessionally for years  Rocky Lhotka s  Business Objects  series about his CSLA framework was the book that opened my eyes   His ideas he got me excited about software development patterns and theory again   It set me on the path of a new interest in learning how to be a better developer  and not just learning about the latest gee-whiz control or library    Don t get me wrong  I still love a good technical book too - you gotta keep up

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I m reading now Agile Software Development  Principles  Patterns and Practices  For those interested in XP and Object-Oriented Design  this is a classic reading   alt text http   ecx images-amazon com images I 519J3P8ANML  SL500 AA240  jpg

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My all-time favorite was the C  Back Book  by Matthew Telles

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The World is Flat  by Thomas Friedman    Excellence in programming demands an investment of mental energy and a dedication to continued learning comparable to the professions of medicine or law  It pays a fraction of what those professions pay  much less the wages paid to the mathematically savvy who head into the finance sector  And wages for constructing code are eroding because it s a profession that is relatively easy for the intelligent and self-disciplined in most economies to enter   Programming has already eroded to the point of paying less than  say  plumbing  Plumbing can t be  offshored   You don t need to pay  2395 to attend the Professional Plumber s Conference every other year for the privilege of receiving an entirely new set of plumbing technologies that will take you a year to learn    If you live in North America or Europe  are young  and are smart  programming is not a rational career choice  Businesses that involve programming  absolutely  Study business  know enough about programming to refine your BS detector  brilliant  But dedicating the lion s share of your mental energy to the mastery of libraries  data structures  and algorithms  That only makes sense if programming is something more to you than an economic choice   If you love programming and for that reason intend to make it your career  then it behooves you to develop a cold-eyed understanding of the forces that are  and will continue  to make it a harder and harder profession in which to make a living   The World is Flat  won t teach you what to name your variables  but it will immerse you for 6 or 8 hours in economic realities that have already arrived  If you can read it  and not get scared  then go out and buy  Code Complete

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Code Craft by Pete Goodliffe is a good read   Code Craft http   ecx images-amazon com images I 51WZ9AEC3GL  SL500 BO2 204 203 200 PIsitb-dp-500-arrow TopRight 45 -64 OU01 AA240 SH20  jpg

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The practice of programming   By Brian W  Kernighan  Rob Pike   The style shown here is excellent - the code just speaks for itself  and the whole book follows the KISS principle   Personally not my languages of choice  but still influential to me

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The most influential programming book for me was Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot by Allen Holub   Cover of the book http   ecx images-amazon com images I 71AE90J735L  SL500 AA240  gif  O  well  how long ago it was

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Mastering C   from Tom Swan   It was the best kind of book  it had examples which were simple enough to teach concepts but useful enough to solve other problems   It was very readable  it was the first book I read when got to college  and it only needed to be read once

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I found  The art of Prolog  a very good read

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Definitively Software Craftsmanship                                                                                  alt text http   ecx images-amazon com images I 5186JKTDVWL  SL500 AA240  jpg  This book explains a lot of things about software engineering  system development  It s also extremly useful to understand the difference between different kind of product developement  web VS shrinkwrap VS IBM framework  What people had in mind when they conceived waterfall model  Read this and all we ll become clear  hopefully

[resources] What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?

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