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Plus one for this choice: Kernighan & Ritchie's The C Programming Language
I taught myself C by reading and re-reading the second edition and everything was approachable, right through the end.
"Qulatiy is Job #1"
modified 27-Oct-20 12:48pm.
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Very useful indeed.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Petzold Programming Windows 3.1 will always have a special place for me.
I remember actually understanding this Windows programming thing and the Windows message loop and thinking, "wow, someone actually explains how this stuff works".
He explained stuff so well that it was like opening up a whole new world and programming was really exciting. Such a special book.
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Petzold is one of those rare individuals who can understand a subject and explain it in ways that a beginner can understand. Without patronising more advanced readers either.
He writes good stuff!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Cool. He's a really good teacher. I have a lot of respect for the man.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I still have a copy of that. I hug it occasionally for inspiration!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Forogar wrote: I still have a copy of that. I hug it occasionally for inspiration!
That is a very good idea. I'm going to have to start hugging mine too. 
Mine sits on a bottom shelf of a bookshelf in my Home Office and each time I see it I get all goose-pimply and start thinking I know how to program again. 
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Kind of mandatory[^]
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I concur. Never discard anything. Learn from ancient knowledge.
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I'd like to make a crazy proposal: When Intel presented its iAPX 432 CPU, I got hold of its reference manual. It is certainly not a programming book, yet it is about what we think of as programming. It made me thoroughly rethink the distinction between hardware and software - as well as some important software concepts.
E.g. in the 432, if one process sends one of its objects to another process (using the IPC instructions of the processor), the sending process looses that object. It may of course make a copy of the object before sending the original away (or keep the original, sending a copy), but the original and the copy are distinct objects. If you give one of them away, you give it away. That is how things work in real life, and in the 432, but not in commonly used software systems today.
Even though the 432 was a major flop, its reference manual has significantly formed my ideas about software. And hardware.
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Interesting!
Real programmers use butterflies
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Anything by Charles Petzold
"I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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When looking for basic algorithms, you can't do much better than Knuth. For specific programming languages, I prefer Plauger's The C Standard Library, Alexandrescu's Modern C++ Design, and anything by Steve McConnell or by Charles Petzold.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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I'm not one for books, but if I had to pick one (besides my own, of course) I'd go with Robert C. Martin's Clean Code.
That book changed the way I write and think about code.
The beauty is that it applies to all languages that were, are or will ever be used, although it uses Java for examples.
Come to think of it, if a Java book is my favorite it has to be REALLY VERY GOOD! 
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I like my code dirty like a martini.
kidding of course
Real programmers use butterflies
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You say you're kidding, but you also use single-line if-statements.
Those are mutually exclusive 
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In all seriousness, I adopt a more relaxed style for my personal projects versus my professional projects.
The thing is, after years of confining myself to the house style (whatever shop i'm at) working my own way is liberating. Maybe I'm a bit extreme about it.
The other thing is, and maybe I shouldn't admit this here but I often am not thinking when I'm writing code. It just comes to me, and I let it. I've written some of my best code that way, so I don't fight it, but it's a bit like free association writing so it's going to reflect my underlying style preferences.
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: I adopt a more relaxed style for my personal projects versus my professional projects.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." —Aristotle
I couldn't even adopt a relaxed style if I wanted to.
I have one style and it's as relaxed as can be.
And I've used this style in multiple teams and I never had complaints.
Well, no complaints on my style at least
honey the codewitch wrote: I often am not thinking when I'm writing code
So consistent with your posting here? 
But seriously, if single-line if-statements are your worst crime you're doing a pretty good job!
I've seen 100+ line functions, 3000+ line classes (WinForms even), completely absurd and ridiculous database designs that weighed the whole project down, etc.
In that perspective, style really isn't that important.
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Message Closed
modified 27-Oct-20 14:18pm.
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You may have replied to the wrong message because my post was neither about C nor Kernighan & Ritchie
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I was going to say Clean Code by Robert C. Martin but Sander beat me to it, so I'm gonna go with Specifying Systems by Leslie Lamport. Not only is it a really interesting book but it's also pretty good for brushing up on discrete mathematics.
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I read Leslie Nielsen because I didn't expect to see any other Leslie on CP.
Had to read it twice
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Haha, I haven't read anything else by Dr. Lamport but this book was excellent. I feel like this topic (discrete representations of software systems including liveness, safety, and fairness properties) is one of those topics where in 10 years there will be some testing framework that will allow you to verify code against a specification which has itself been mathematically verified for correctness.
There are some companies that have already used this concept for products (CosmosDB) but as far as I'm aware it requires manual verification of code against a spec which is tedious and time-consuming.
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