[rffn]

- The Pragmatic Programmer (Hunt/Thomas)

- Computer Architecture - A Quantitative Approach (Hennessy/Patterson)

- Expert C Programming - Deep C Secrets (van der Linden)

I woud call the Pragmatic Programmer though by far the most influential.

[pllbnk]

Interesting that this book is mentioned in this thread several times. I didn't find this book bringing almost any value to me. What it did was giving names (e.g. orthogonality) that I didn't know before to the common programming concepts that all developers with some practical experience should be aware of anyway as a common sense. But that might just be due to a different approach to programming.

I find the books such as Andrew Tanenbaum's "Computer Networks" which are bringing historical perspective as well as a lot of technical information without going into the tiny details the best balance of useful and interesting.

Therefore "Computer Architecture - A Quantitative Approach" is much better for me in that aspect and the C programming should be really interesting too, although I haven't read it.