I'm thinking of blog posts and resources that are more than a few years old, but had a big impact and continue to be circulated as relevant and interesting reads.
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Those are my classics:
I also just got sent "The Story of Mel" which apparently is a classic story (more on the humorous side; also I haven't read it yet myself)
I liked "The C programming language".
Even if you do not end up using C, this is a really good read. And since we are talking about classics I thought we count this in.
And "Refactoring" by Martin Fowler and gang is really useful one. It helped me a lot.
And "Structure and interpretation of computer programs" for people who are naughty enough. You may think this meaningful or crazy recommendation. It is useful for somebody. It helped me.
I loved these books to get more in-depth knowledge about Javascript.
And the online versions are absolutely free which is absolutely ridiculous!
I also liked "SQL Database for Beginners" to get acquainted with the basics on SQL. Would love to have a similar book on MongoDB (or another non-relational database).
Clean Code was great. It's just important to have a good grasp of Java first, or at least read it twice if you don't.
Love that quote from Bill Gates on Knuth's books: "You should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing.". Which makes me believe my dad is right when he calls me crazy for wanting to read it... It's probably way too mathematical most people, including myself.
In "Deep Work", Cal Newport also describes that Knuth went for very long stretches of extreme concentration (blocking out all forms of communication during work hours) at the time of writing. Which is also cited as one of the reasons why it became such an absolute classic, and I'm inclined to believe that.
Ted Neward's The Vietnam of Computer Science which makes the case that Object/Relational Mappers are a terrible idea. Especially interesting to think about today when you have projects like Prisma that provide similar functionality to an ORM while insisting that they be referred to as a query builder instead.
Great question. I did a survey when I first joined Red Hat to find out what my colleagues considered to be the essential reads. Some of these were hard slogs, but these in particular were impactful for me (and them).
A pretty essential history of computing told through the lens of open source, but IMHO superbly summing up some major computing shifts through the eyes of the people and technology at that time.
At the moment I'm having fun with:
And you could do worse than read any of Alan Kay's favourite books, as he summarises here on Quora. Oh and for those that don't know who Alan Kay is, you're in for a treat. Computing is a wonderful topic that, if approached right, unlocks so much other science for consideration. So it's no surprise many of the above are move than just "learn this syntax for programming output".
One book I re-read is DevOps handbook
UTC is Enough for Everyone, Right?. It'll take you a long time (pun intended) to read this, but it's totally worth it.
I read this article at the beginning of my programming journey when I was trying to figure out how to do something with time in Java. I stumbled across this and it explained why I was having so much difficulty. I later shared this article with a peer who was working on a group project and wanted to do something unusual with time (can't remember what) and she immediately decided it was not worth implementing after reading!
How come no body mentioned Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (Martin Fowler). It is excellent (i mean Excellent read).
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, aka "The Wizard Book."
And, at least as far as I'm concerned, JavaScript, the Good Parts.
Clean Code
Talks about how to write and structure readable code, and why you should do it. Also talks about TDD
Refactoring
Shows you how to refactor code effectively and progressively, the last edition uses JavaScript for the examples
Pragmatic Programmer
Probably the most popular book. Talks about soft skills, tooling, development, everything that makes you a better developer. Should read this at least once in your life
Code Complete
Bit old but still relevant. It's a compendium of techniques
Design Patterns - gang of four
Self explanatory title, teaches you how to write better and scalable code depending on what you're trying to solve
Not "classic" but I think useful anyway: Cracking the coding interview
Teaches algorithms and data structures (+ how to pass interviews at the big companies)
If you want to pick just one I would read clean code or pragmatic programmer
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