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I think the only programming book I ever read was the one that came with my Commodore 64.
There is a Modula-2 book in my parents house that I was required to buy at university, but I don't remember opening it.
“I believe that there is an equality to all humanity. We all suck.” Bill Hicks
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That was very similar to what I was thinking. I mean 30 or so years ago when I started programming the basic manual that came with my Vic20 was extremely helpful. I doubt any other single manual taught me more.
John
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You read the book? 
I thought everyone just loaded Manic Miner and off they went...
Reality is an illusion caused by a lack of alcohol
"Nagy, you have won the internets." - Keith Barrow
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Seriously, my story is much identical.
As the question is kind of what book made me a good programmer I don't think the ZX Spectrum manual last page can get that onus, but it certainly was the one that got me on track.
Here's the link I found: Timex Computer 2048[^]
Here's the exact manual, even in Portuguese as mine 
... 27 or 28 years ago... 
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I have learnt an entire programming language using only Google i.e C#. Google can actually give publishers a run for their money.
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I totally agree with you.Even i have learnt almost everything that i know about C# from Google. 
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Yes, I prefer online(articles,etc.,) instead of books.
thatrajaNobody remains a virgin, Life screws everyone
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by Alfred V. Aho, Brian W. Kernighan, and Peter J. Weinberger.
AWK (I use GAWK) if you haven't met it, is a very old language, very simple and very fast. Perfect for a lazy old programmer like me who works mostly at data filtering and transformations plus database and web work. If the job requires lots of code (text processing, SQL, HTML, Javascript, JQuery) it is much more fun to write templates in AWK to do the heavy lifting for you. Sometimes it seems like going the long way round but the big payoff comes in come the inevitable "Can we just make this little change?" requests. Just alter a few lines of code in the template and out comes a fresh batch of error free code.
Jon Burne
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one of my earliest jobs as a developer came with the book Code Complete (1st Edition). I don't know that book improved my coding abilities as it was more the manager who almost made it mandatory reading.
a lot of our development standards were modeled straight from the book so it only made sense if you wanted to be productive in that mangers group. the most important discipline that I took from the book is that software development does not begin with writing code from the start.
you want something inspirational??
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Some of the best books I've read have taken me from absolute noob to a reasonably capable developer in the given technology. K&R's book, obviously, as well as Mike Blascack's MFC books, but there are books that you read that make you think about coding differently. They take you away from the specific syntax and libraries and make you think about how you're thinking. For these I'd have to say Clean Code really got me thinking, and Effective C#, while C# specific, made me get out of my C++ rut and think about what a given language could actually do differently instead of just traating a new language like an old language with a different library.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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You're elaborating on "best books". What is your assessment on what is "a good programmer"? Might be another straw poll? 
- know one (many?) language well?
- know one (many?) runtime environment well?
- know one (many?) development environment well?
- ...
- gives accurate estimations?
- delivers adequate quality?
- constructs reasonably maintainable code?
- writes decent documentation?
- ...
- is a team player?
- also performs under pressure
- ...
Cheers
Andi
PS: I like your statement: "[...] instead of just treating a new language like an old language with a different library [...]"
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