Since I also put PAIP in my top 5 books, here are my 4 other ones: - The Pragmatic Programmer - This changed my life when I started programming 20 years ago.

Since I also put PAIP in my top 5 books, here are my 4 other ones: - The Pragmatic Programmer - This changed my life when I started programming 20 years ago. Most of the practices are now common, but it was almost radical back then. - Designing Data Intensive Applications This is so well written, so elegantly fundamental. It's an absolute pleasure, even if I don't really refer to it in practice. - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs In many ways, the MIT version of PAIP. Its elegance complements the pragmatism of PAIP well. - The unicorn project My number 5 book varies often, because I haven't found many books that reach the writing quality of the other 4. This is a business novel, but it really solidified a lot of concepts for me: lean, queues, theory of constraints, what devops is about, working as a programmer in a business.