[EnderMB]

1) Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell: I bought this book after it was referenced in one of Alex Ferguson's books. It's a fascinating tale of how people became to be successful by being the right person in the right environment at the right time, from how Bill Gates dominated the world of software, to how The Beatles became one of the best bands in the world. It's a great reminder that a mixture of hard work, the right environment, and dumb luck will help you do well.

2) C# in Depth by Jon Skeet: Buying and reading this book is what led me to continue down the deep rabbit hole of .NET development, and following the C# language from version 1 onwards via the book is a great way to appreciate the language, as well as use it. As someone that writes C# daily this is the main book I recommend to existing devs.

3) Introduction to Algorithms by CLRS: This is a bit of a cheat, because I've only glanced at various pages of this book. I have a degree in Computer Science, but my maths knowledge is lacking (to put it kindly), so despite my degree I have only a practical understanding of a lot of the algorithms talked about in the book. It's been my goal for years to build up my knowledge of maths to the point where I can read this book cover-to-cover and actually understand what's going on. I'm still not there, but hopefully one day I'll make it.

[hirakchatterjee]

I can't agree more on #3. But there are few other books which take a less mathematical approach and I have found it quite useful.

[EnderMB]

I've picked up quite a few over the years, with my favourite being Algorithms by Sedgewick.

With that being said, I've tried to teach myself about the most important data structures and algorithms, but I find that I'm not "really" understanding them, and am purely just remembering the gist of what I need to know.

Perhaps it's imposter syndrome, but despite being a passable developer, there's a part of me that feels that I need to be able to read the CLRS book and actually understand what's going on, because until I can read that book I don't feel that I know the ins-and-outs of these algorithms.