Eloquent Ruby

I'm reading Becky Chambers' The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, the latest edition of Eloquent Ruby, and Mastering Emacs. I'm not sure any are that cognitively challenging, but all of them are certainly lovely.

Most influential - Clean Code and The Joy of C (the first programming book I've read) Most informative - Effective Java Funniest - Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! Best written - Eloquent Ruby Most useful - Data Modeling Essentials

Influence by Robert Cialdini. Models by Mark Manson. Eloquent Ruby by Russ Olsen.

Eloquent Ruby is one of my favorite books, too. That book really motivated me to learn how programming languages work. Here are a few other books I found to be enjoyable and well-written: Programming Erlang by Joe Armstrong Programming Elixir by Dave Thomas Seven (more) Languages In Seven Weeks by Bruce Tate Think Bayes, Think OS, How To Think Like A Functional Programmer (Think OCaml) and The Little Book of Semaphores by Allen B. Downey

Eloquent Ruby[1] by Russ Olsen If you are an experienced programmer coming to Ruby this is definitely the place to start. Especially if you are a Java or .NET EE-indoctrinated programmer. The people who maintain your code after you will be thankful that you read this and wrote idiomatic Ruby. If you just want to learn Ruby or read an excellent technical book as mind food this book is also a great choice. (Code by Petzold is actually my favorite technical book, but its already been picked.) [1] http://eloquentruby.com/