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myWindoonn

The essentials, looking at my non-CS shelves:

* "Alice in Wonderland", Carroll

* "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid", Hofstadter

* Either "His Dark Materials", Pullman; or "Illuminatus!", Shea and Wilson

* "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Adams (all of its sequels are also good)

* "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and "Lila", Pirsig

* Either "Watchmen", Moore and Gibbons; or "1984" or "Animal Farm", Orwell

* "Neuromancer" or "Pattern Recognition", Gibson

Be wary of anybody who recommends self-help, attitude improvement, psychology, business/management, or similar genres.

Also, I notice that some folks have recommended the official Steve Jobs biography. From my biography shelf, I humbly recommend instead "iCon", by Young and Simon, which is unauthorized and much more detailed.

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> Be wary of anybody who recommends self-help, attitude improvement, psychology, business/management, or similar genres.

This is a fairly broad rejection of multiple genres. While I agree that there are bad eggs in all of those categories (some moreso than others), there also is value to be found, and wariness of someone simply for recommending a book from one of those categories sounds overly harsh and dismissive.

Not to put words in someone else's mouth, but isn't the advised wariness targeted at the recommenders rather than the genres?

I like your train of thought, but the logic that follows is one can not enjoy or recommend self-improvement books to one another lest they be lumped in with some group of undesirables .. which is silly, as there are many beneficial books in the genre.

After all, not everyone is born with a perfect understanding of social science and behavior, especially many programmers.

I agree. My former mentors and colleagues need to understand more psychology and how to improve themselves, because they tore our team apart and cost themselves and all of us incredible opportunities.

A good programmer isn't just one who can program. They must be willing to accept the fact that they aren't a special snowflake and that great achievements come from sharing and teamwork, having constructive and wholesome paradigms, etc.

I have been building world class e-sports teams for two decades. It breaks my heart for the future to see so many well educated folk ripping into eachother and themselves in these ways.

Assuming you already have a fairly well-defined set of values and a personal philosophy, the next most useful genre by far is psychology. It's not even a close contest.

As for self-help/attitude improvement, it's only useless if you don't already know what science suggests are good habits and behaviors. From there, it's the process of integrating those into your life that becomes critical.

Speaking as someone who chronically lacked discipline, which then translated into a lot of mistakes, among the most important things a person can understand is the value of positive habits and behaviors, compounded over a long time period. Habits and behaviors are what drive wellbeing across a variety of different dimensions: diet, exercise, learning, growth, experience, socialization, etc. They are the principal foundation of a happy life, and most people never even come close to appreciating their full importance.

All that said, I'll be the first to admit that the self-help genre is typically more about dopamine hits and quick sales than real results.

I agree with your whole list except for the fact that I have not read neither "His Dark Materials" nor "Illuminatus!", so thank you for that :)

What I want to add is that while "Gödel, Escher, Bach" is great, I found "I am a strange loop" makes a better point. I'd say that the two books from Pirsig, plus "I am a strange loop" helped me form a lot of my personal philosophy.

Godel, Escher, Bach definitely to see how nearly everything can be made into symbols which computers can manipulate, eg how music is maths etc

Came here to recommend Zen and the Art. Its either a book that changes your life or utter garbage.

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