For me, two books that changed how I thought about software were (and I may date myself here): 1. Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment[0] This changed

For me, two books that changed how I thought about software were (and I may date myself here): 1. Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment[0] This changed writing software from being about the code I was writing to being about the underlying systems my code was interacting with. My favorite little feature I learned about was the ability to pass open filehandles between processes (not threads, but processes), which I later used for open connection caching in Usenet systems. 2. Object Oriented Perl[1] The mind-bending part of this book for me was when Conway explains about using structures other than hashes (dicts) as Perl objects. Arrays were interesting, scalars slightly more so, but then functions ... as objects. This one chapter brought clarity to functional programming that I never got from any other explanation. All the other books listed here are on the list two, but these were two books about specific mechanics of software development that were worth so much more outside of their respective languages. (edited to add links) [0] https://www.pearson.com/store/p/advanced-programming-in-the-unix-environment/P200000000628/9780321638007 https://www.pearson.com/store/p/advanced-programming-in-the-... [1] https://www.manning.com/books/object-oriented-perl https://www.manning.com/books/object-oriented-perl