Always Be Reading A Book That Will Make You Look Good If You Die In The Middle Of It.

When I was doing the start up thing in the Silicon Valley, there was an engineer the I'd always see reading some pretty esoteric books. I queried them one day when I noticed they were carrying a rather large book on quantum mechanics. Having an interest myself, I welcomed the chance to discuss the subject. Turned out he wasn't even really reading the book. It was, in his words, "bait for the smart ones over at the Stanford campus." He would spend his lunch time over there at the commons, hunting his prey. I never did find out if the bait actually worked...

 "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. " - Groucho Marx

A good bookshelf is a must for any serious devotee of hardware and software. Myself, I stopped counting when I crested the 1000 book mark for my computer science related texts. As learning tools, reference works, and sources of pleasure, a good computer book is hard to beat in my opinion. With that in mind, I thought I'd make an entry listing the top tenish books that I think every serious programmer should have in their shelves.

These are not listed in any particular order other than that which they came to mind, and are operating system and language agnostic for the most part.

The Art of Computer Programming; Donald Knuth
All three volumes of course, plus the five fascicles that presage volume 4. Never has so much CS knowledge been packed into such a small space. This truly is a CS degree in a box.

Elements of Programming; Alexander Stepanov
Programming is mathematics. Seldom is this fact given proper treatment. This book remedies that brilliantly.

Introduction to Algorithms; Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein
A standard reference for professionals, and a widely used university text. Half of a CS degree is in this book.

Modern Operating Systems; Andrew Tanenbaum
The classic all-around reference and learning resource for the details of the inner workings of operating systems. From the creator of Minix, a Unix like teaching OS that was the template for the first Linux.

Beautiful Code; Andy Oram, Greg Wilson
See how luminaries in the programming world have created elegant solutions to difficult problems in a variety of programming paradigms and languages.

Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages; Federico Biancuzzi, Chromatic
A superb 'behind the scenes' look at how historic and influential languages came to be, told by their progenitors.

Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction ; Steve McConnell
A classic, recently updated. Certainly one of my 'desert island' picks for instruction on the proper design and construction of software.

Programming Windows; Charles Petzold
It's dated. It's also still the classic reference for Windows programming. "Look it up in Petzold!"

Windows Internals; Mark Russinovich, David Solomon, Alex Ionescu
There is no better publicly available reference for what makes Windows tick than this tome from the 'ghostbusters' of the Windows world.

The Algorithm Design Manual; Steven Skiena
Implementations and explanations of all of the important algorithms, and humorous to boot.

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs; Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman
This classic, often called 'the wizard book', was the text for MIT's introduction to programming classes. A rigorous lesson in how to think about programming.

Compilers: Principles, Techniques, & Tools ; Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman
The best survey, in my opinion, of the inner workings of compilers, with a sharp view of how design decisions affect the user.

I think if I awoke to my house on fire, after getting my family out, these would be the books I'd want to save from the blaze. I could happily settle for them being the only books on my personal shelf.

What's on your own list that you'd bring to a desert island?