How to: Must-read books
I've found these books incredibly inspiring:

- 📖 [The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master](https://pragprog.com/titles/tpp20/): hands-on the most inspiring and useful book I've read about programming.
- 📖 [Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction](http://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Construction/dp/0735619670): a nice addition to The Pragmatic Programmer, gives you the necessary framework to talk about code.
- 📖 [Release It!](https://smile.amazon.com/Release-Design-Deploy-Production-Ready-Software/dp/1680502395): this books goes beyond code and gives you best practices for building production-ready software. It will give you about 3 years worth of real-world experience.
- 📖 [Scalability Rules: 50 Principles for Scaling Web Sites](https://smile.amazon.com/Scalability-Rules-Principles-Scaling-Sites/dp/013443160X)
- 📖 [The Linux Programming Interface: A Linux and UNIX System Programming Handbook](http://www.amazon.com/The-Linux-Programming-Interface-Handbook/dp/1593272200): outside of teaching you almost everything you need to know about Linux, this book will give you insights into how software evolves, and the value of having simple & elegant interfaces.
- 📖 [Structure and interpretation of Computer Programs](https://web.mit.edu/6.001/6.037/sicp.pdf) (free): One of the most influential textbooks in Computer Science (written and used at MIT), SICP has been influential in CS education. [Byte](
) recommended SICP "for professional programmers who are really interested in their profession".

There are some free books available, including:

- 📖 [Professional software development](http://mixmastamyk.bitbucket.io/pro_soft_dev/): pretty complete and a good companion to this page. The free chapters are mostly focused on software development processes: design, testing, code writing, etc. - and not so much about tech itself.
- 🧰 [vhf/free-programming-books](https://github.com/vhf/free-programming-books)
- 🧰 [EbookFoundation/free-programming-books](https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/tree/main/books)