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I have, very occasionally, been running a series called Pete's Book Of The Whatever (PBOTW) where I give a brief view on books that I have found interesting, informative, influential or challenging. Every time I post, I update this blog entry[^] with details and a link back to the original PBOTW.
This space for rent
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These two:
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Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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The first and last one I read from cover to cover was Herb Schildt's Teach Yourself C. That's going back longer than I care to mention - pre-internet days.
These days, I find it easier to learn from on-line articles than books. There are some great resources out there on sites like this and SQLServerCentral and I've rarely felt the need to hit the book shop for IT purposes in the last few years. The last decent coding book I bought was John Skeet's C# in Depth which is great but not for the faint-hearted.
Slogans aren't solutions.
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What! Not the K&R?
Sin tack ear lol
Pressing the any key may be continuate
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No, I've probably read all of K&R at some point or other but not in a start-at-the-start-finish-at-the-end kind of way.
The more I think about this topic, the more I realise that reading time is far, far more rewarding when devoted to the adventures of Jeeves and Wooster than it ever could be when looking at coding manuals.
Slogans aren't solutions.
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Terry Pratchett - some good ideas in his books, the tourist in particular had a lot of good items that are actually real now.
Sin tack ear lol
Pressing the any key may be continuate
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I tried him eons ago and wasn't overly taken with him at the time.
He's constantly getting recommended by people with similar tastes to myself, though, so I will give them another go at some point.
Slogans aren't solutions.
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K&R is really a great book. It is even currently ranked #4 at amazon in Programming Languages section - Amazon Best Sellers: Best Computer Programming Languages[^] which is absolutely amazing considering how old that book is.
Also, think about how simple the book is. It just steps through these little programs building the readers knowledge with each page. The programs are so simple really but do some really interesting things. Of course it is all console based so that is interesting too,because the authors didn't have to worry about teaching UI type of layers.
Disclaimer : It may sound as if I'm saying the book isn't good, I'm not. However, it is interesting that a book written like that these days might not be accepted since a lot of readers would complain about all the "missing" parts. 
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I think it was much easier to structure a book in those days because there was a simple entry point at "Hello World" which could be dealt with in the first couple of pages and things could build slowly and steadily from that.
Modern development environments don't really lend themselves to that approach. Make a new partition, install this VM, install that VM, kick your machine around the room, wipe it clean, reinstall everything, swear a lot, get this plug-in, get that plug-in, figure out some license agreement written in gibberish, get the plug-in you missed, swear some more, 'phone your brother because he's never seen a train crash ... before you know it, you're on chapter 96 without a single line of code having been written.
That's not to take anything away from the mighty K&R - quite possibly the best pair of developers who ever lived and pretty darned good at explaining it, too.
Slogans aren't solutions.
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I agree 100%.
While developing my iphone/iPad app I had to install some CocoaPods thing that was simply entirely magic to me.
1. Go to terminal
2. type in command to pull libraries
3. hope
4. try to build...
if anything fails along the way, you don't know if it is a script that pulls the library or what.
We program from _mystery_ these days and have left _mastery_ behind.
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raddevus wrote: We program from mystery these days and have left mastery behind.
That says it perfectly!
Slogans aren't solutions.
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I'm actually planning on reading this book soon. I've heard good things 
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I'm going to buck the trend, and recommend Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. IMO, learning a computer language is only the first (and easiest) step. The next step is learning algorithms, data structures etc. No programmer can be considered professional if he does not know something about these areas.
Data Structures and Algorithms by Aho, Ullman, and Hopcroft is also a good book.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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All 3 of the John Robbins debugging books have been hugely helpful and influential for me.
(Debugging Applications, Debugging Applications for Microsoft .Net and Microsoft Windows and Debugging Microsoft .Net 2 applications). All 3 though dated in areas, are amazingly useful and should be read start to finish. The amount of time you can save....
I'd also recommend Code Complete.
I'd also recommend K & R for C fundamentals.
Last but not least the Mark Russinovich Internals books about Windows. Incredibly useful.
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Here is a selection of some of my favourite reads.
Joel on Software - Joel Spolsky: Easily one of the best book on software I have ever read. He takes a tour of software development covering every aspect of the industry.
Why Software Sucks - David Platt: A brilliant look into the UX / UI of software and why software developers aren't always the best people to design them.
Grady Booch - Object-Oriented Design with Applications: The best book on the subject of OOP. I read this from start to finish and never regretted it.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare
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The most continuously useful for me is probably: NUMERICAL RECIPES IN C: THE ART OF SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING (ISBN 0-521-43108-5) Numerical Recipes - Wikipedia[^]
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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, if your work involves lots of numerical stuff.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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Vital Dust
In my late 20's, this book, having nothing to do with programming, completely changed my thinking about how programming should be done. For the better, IMO.
Marc
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See my signature (bottom two)
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Not sure if it counts but it was indispensable for a long time.
The Microsoft C 5.1 Language Reference. It was in a 3 ring binder that allowed the pages to lay flat and stay on the page you were using. I lost it in a job change somehow, I still miss it.
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