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

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"

• 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 & 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
• Gödel, 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

K&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

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.

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.

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.

Definitively Software Craftsmanship

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)

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!

Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming.

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.

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.

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

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

Programming from the ground up. It's free on the internet. This book taught me AT&T asm. It is very easy to read.

@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.

"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."

This last year I took a number of classes. I read

http://books.google.com/books?id=lqKho8KWXmAC&dq=the+innovator%27s+dilemma&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=MLhnSu_-DJWHlAev4LjgCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4">The Innovator's Dilemma (disruptive tech)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month">The Mythical Man Month (managing software)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm">Crossing the Chasm (startup)
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~dbbook/">Database Management Systems, The COW Book
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003098/">Programming C#, The OSTRICH Book
http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430216263">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!

hackers, by Steven Levy.

The personality and way of life must come first. Everything else can be learned.

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.

Object Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications by Brady Booch

The Practice of Programming

and

How to solve it by computer

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.

The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

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.

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][1] 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").

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/013215871X/103-8873709-5948669?ie=UTF8&tag=slidiuptheban-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=013215871X "A Discipline of Programming"

Code Craft by Pete Goodliffe is a good read!

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.

C++ How to Program It is good for beginner.This is excellent book that full complete with 1500 pages.

http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Culture/dp/0812972155/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225044816&sr=8-1">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!

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):

1. 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.
2. 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!

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

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.

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

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.

Mastering Regular Expressions

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

Mr. Bunny's Guide To ActiveX

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.

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.

Rapid Development by McConnell

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.

"The Practice of programming" by Brian W.Kerninghan & Rob Pike.

The language is easy and also the subject matter is interesting.

Refactoring

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.

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.

Software Tools by by Brian W. Kernighan and P. J. Plauger

It had a profound influence on how I write software.

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.

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.

Perfect Software: And Other Illusions about Testing

Perfect Software: And Other Illusions about Testing by Gerald M. Weinberg

ISBN-10: 0932633692

ISBN-13: 978-0932633699

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.

The Back of the Napkin, by Dan Roam.

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.

Enterprise Patterns and MDA: Building Better Software with Archetype Patterns and UML

An excellent read for those looking to leverage ORM and UML

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.

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.

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.

Programming Perl (O'Reilly)

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

Effective C++ and More Effective C++ by Scott Myers.

Object-Oriented Software Construction by Bertrand Meyer

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.

Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment by W. Richard Stevens.

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.

Adding to the great ones mentioned above:

Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture

Enterprise Integration Patterns

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Code-Language-DV-Undefined-Charles-Petzold/dp/0735611319/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221573014&sr=8-1">Code</a>

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.

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.

Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass

This one started me off into true OOA&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

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.

Extreme Programming by Kent Beck

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519J3P8ANML._SL500_AA240_.jpg"/>

Took my programing to a whole new level.

Coder to Developer, by Mike Gunderloy.

The most influential programming book for me was Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot by Allen Holub.

O, well, how long ago it was.

Whether you are coding in Smalltalk or not [Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns][1] is a great read. Full of small observations that will change the way you code; for the better.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Smalltalk-Best-Practice-Patterns-Kent/dp/013476904X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221725048&sr=8-5 "Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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

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

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

Advanced Programming in the UNIX environment - W. Richard Stevens

http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Master/dp/020161622X">Pragmatic Programmer

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.

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.

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.

I found "The art of Prolog" a very good read.

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.

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

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.

Win32 Programming by Charles Petzold

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 :-)

"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

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