Ask HN: Books for soon to be Software Engineers

The Pragmatic Programmer (Read this once every 6 months until it's obvious)

Code Complete which several other people recommend is a great book, but it's one of those books that make much more sense after you've been programming for a year or so.

Code Complete

seconding effective java, in particular.

Effective Java

I recommend Jon Bentley's "Programming Pearls" series

Clean Code

Coders at work

Head first design patterns

for sure read The Cathedral and the Bazaar by ESR

Agile Web Development with Rails It's not obvious, but the rails book is a great introduction to test-driven development in general.

Debugging by Agans

The Passionate programmer [Pragmatic series]

The Practice Of Programming