21st Century C

I would split the books into two categories: those that improve the way you structure your code and deliver a software solution, and those that improve your technical understanding of the software platform and the computer you're using. The first are books like Pragmatic Programmer, Mythical Man Month, Code Complete, Design Patterns, talks by Alan Kay on software systems and OOP, even Game Engine Architecture etc. A lot of the content there is distilled experience which is much faster to learn from a book than gain the hard way on the job. The other books are practical deep dives. Here I would recommend a variety of books like Inside the Machine by Stokes, Computer Architecture by Hennessy, 21st Century C by Klemens, Crafting Interpreters by Nystrom, Compilers by Aho, Effective Java, Nature of Code by Shiffman, Ray Tracing Challenge by Buck, Hands on Hacking by Hickey, and others, depending on your interest and area of focus.

(Some of the +below are O'Reilly DRM-free ebooks. Big fan.) Python: +Effective Computation in Physics. Probably the most practical full-environment treatment of Python I've seen. Write, test, package, distribute. Third party libs. Effective Python, Brett Slatkin. Sort of an "N ways to improve your Python." Part of a series edited by Scott Meyers. Getting my C mojo back: I left C/C++ 15 years ago. C++ will likely stay left, but I miss C. +Reading 21st Century C, Ben Klemens. The first half is the development environment, which is great, since there's some new stuff since I left, and lots of stuff I've forgotten or never knew. Rereading Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets by Van der Linden. The guy's a riot. It's dated but still relevant. The inside baseball stuff on problems seen while working in Sun's compiler group is fascinating. Rereading C Interfaces and Implementations, Hanson. Hoping this will serve as my C version of Large Scale C++ Design by Lakos. Honestly though, the literate programming style of presentation is off-putting. Are we still talking about that?

21st Century C - O'Reilly http://www.amazon.com/21st-Century-Tips-New-School/dp/149190... (http://www.amazon.com/21st-Century-Tips-New-School/dp/1491903899/)