What's a programming book that you wish you read earlier in your career?

When I was in the middle school there was a new series of books about programming video games. There was not too much resources than to learn from about it. I was visiting the bookstore several times to read at least some pages. But since it was several books, each over 1000 pages long, i had to buy them to read in full.

I didn't find a way to earn money for these books, and eventually lacked the knowledge to pursuit the dream of making video games.

Now i am over 30 years old, and regret I didn't read these books than.

However, if it comes to my dev career, i wished I have read earlier books about these topics:

- effective communication - leadership - getting things done, the book - design - user experience - psychological books

It does not mean classical, technical and craft books are not important. I have red just a lot of these when I was young.

But these above would help me shape my career in a better way, enjoy it more and focus on the important stuff.

The Pragmatic Programmer. It feels like a textbook introduction to the software engineering field. Not the code part, but more the engineering parts.

Python Notes for Professionals book would have been perfect five years ago when I started my programming career

Link: https://books.goalkicker.com/PythonBook

As disaffected as it is, i think Neal Stepheson's "Diamond Age" has programming book "backstory" that carries weight many years later...sort of a 3rd decade insight class of wisdom...

The Stevens Unix and networking books.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens

Clean Code

SICP and the Stevens and Tanenbaum books.