Published on 2021-12-31. Modified on 2022-10-22.
Some resources I find valuable or useful for one reason or another (in no particular order).
The Art of Unix Programming attempts to capture the engineering wisdom and philosophy of the Unix community as it's applied today — not merely as it has been written down in the past, but as a living "special transmission, outside the scriptures" passed from guru to guru. Accordingly, the book doesn't focus so much on "what" as on "why", showing the connection between Unix philosophy and practice through case studies in widely available open-source software.
This book is a MUST read!
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master is a book about computer programming and software engineering, written by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas and first published in October 1999. It is used as a textbook in related university courses. For the book's 20th anniversary a 2019 release was made with major revisions and new material reflecting changes in the industry over the last twenty years.
The book does not present a systematic theory, but rather a collection of tips to improve the development process in a pragmatic way. The main qualities of what the authors refer to as a pragmatic programmer are being an early adopter, to have fast adaptation, inquisitiveness and critical thinking, realism, and being a jack-of-all-trades.
While I do recommend this book, I also recommend that you use your common sense and don't follow this book religiously! Some of the advice, especially in the 2019 edition, has unfortunately been affected by the so-called "modern industry standard".
Michael W. Lucas has written a lot of great IT related books and I can highly recommend all of them.