[323]

The programming meme books that you must have on your shelf (reading optional) are:

- The C Programming Language (original C book)

- The Art of Computer Programming (TAOCP)

- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP)

- Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (Dragon book)

- Don't Make Me Think (design)

- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

[HillRat]

I'd also recommend (inter alia -- there's a lot of great works out there!) Friedman et al.'s Schemer books, Petzold's "Code" and "The Annotated Turing," McConnell's "Code Complete," Pierce's "Types and Programming Languages," and Warren's "Hacker's Delight."

[astrange]

The Dragon Book is a bad compiler book. Don’t recommend it just because it has a cool name.

Grune’s Parsing Techniques and Morgan’s Building an Optimizing Compiler are okay.