It would be interesting if we answered the question, along with another: why/how? (Is that two other questions?). Knowing why and how, say, Roger L'Estrange's 1

It would be interesting if we answered the question, along with another: why/how? (Is that two other questions?). Knowing why and how, say, Roger L'Estrange's 1715 Aesop's Fables influenced you so would be much more interesting than just knowing that, it did influence you. Me? Jane Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities. I read it when I was 21 (1998) and it changed how I walk down the street, every single day of my life since. Why this street is full of life, and that street is empty, for example. But not only that: she basically argues that central planning is disastrous for cities, and that cities should think on the street and human levels, from the ground up, and then iterate from there (rather than top-down). These ideas applied to other areas of life -- like software development, for example -- have been very powerful for me. I'd argue that Jacobs' thought is a precursor to the whole XP/agile software movement, for example. Both start with the same premise, the spec is dead (in software language). All this is probably obvious to y'all, but wasn't to me at 21 ;)