- Software Tools in Pascal by Kernighan and Plauger.
- Programming Pearls by Bentley
- Smalltalk 80: The Language and Its Implementation by Adele Goldberg.
- Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming by Norvig
- A Discipline of Programming by Dijkstra
While I've ommited some important language specific books, and ignored essential areas (algorithms, discrete math, hw arquitecture), I think this is a good starting point.
While this is nothing new (it has been said a thousand times by now) you'll have to:
1. Read a ton of (good) books: this will expose you to new (and old) ideas and techniques.
2. Read a lot of code: this will expose you to good, bad and awful code. As you suffer other people's bad ideas, you'll learn to recognize and avoid them.
3. Practice, practice, practice.
About the #1 point, it's very important to read not only fashionable books or things related to your immediate work. Try to be broad: read the classics, even if their ideas seem outdated to you. Read about the history of the field and the old programming languages and systems (you'll notice that things haven't changed that much).
Also, try to learn a couple of languages that are really different from each other. If you know Java, learning C# won't give you anything. Good languages to expand your mind are: Racket/Scheme/CommonLisp/Clojure (DSLs, metaprogramming, FP, OO, almost anything ...), Haskell/Scala/ML ("real" static typing and FP), Smalltalk (like Java but fun!), Factor/Forth ...; explore a couple of them and pick the ones that make you feel "weird": those are the ones you'll learn interesting things from.
And don't rush: becoming a good programmer will take your whole life; but it's fun and extremely rewarding.
- How to design programs (http://htdp.org)
- The Little/Seasoned/Reasoned Schemer.
- Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Petzold
- Coders at work by Peter Seibel
- The Pragmatic Programmer by Hunt and Thomas
- Code Complete by McConnell
For intermediate/experienced people:
- Structure and Interpretation of computer programs (http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html)
- Software Tools in Pascal by Kernighan and Plauger.
- Programming Pearls by Bentley
- Smalltalk 80: The Language and Its Implementation by Adele Goldberg.
- Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming by Norvig
- A Discipline of Programming by Dijkstra
While I've ommited some important language specific books, and ignored essential areas (algorithms, discrete math, hw arquitecture), I think this is a good starting point.