“There's roughly 400 programming books on my bookshelf.  If I had to reduce it to just five, here are the books I just couldn't live without.

1. Introduction to Algorithms - Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest & Stein.  This programming book provides in depth yet accessible coverage of many algorithms.  If I want to get the job done as quickly and painfree as possible, I reach for Introduction to Algorithms before Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming every time.
2. Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools - Aho, Sethi & Ullman.  "The Dragon Book" provides an excellent introduction to compiling before getting stuck into the inner workings of analysis, translation, code generation and optimisation.
3. The New Turing Omnibus - Dewdney.  Sitting atop the fun programming books category, Dewdney's book offers 66 articles covering a variety of computer science topics and recreational computing problems.
4. Fundamentals of Operating Systems - Lister.  The way the structure of this book mirrors the structure of an operating system makes it an easier point of reference than books such as Krakowiak's Principles of Operating Systems.
5. Advanced Spectrum FORTH - Thomasson.  Depite being written for a sadly obsolete platform, Advanced Spectrum FORTH remains one of the best FORTH programming books.  The source code for the dictionary provides a valuable resource.

Disagree?  Think I've missed out a classic programming book?  Drop me a comment below.” source...