There are books that nobody reads because they don't contain good ideas, and there are books that nobody reads because they're too dense. The second category contains some of the most valuable books out there.
I'd put the gang of four design patterns book into the second category. Often, a book or journal article is there to be cited as a breakthrough work on a subject, but very few people read it - instead, they read the thousands of other, more easily accessible books and articles on the subject.
This is why "Head First Design Patterns" is in the "books I've read list", and "GOF" is in the books nobody reads list. GOF is on my shelf, and I've browsed through it, but I go to other sources to understand and implement design patterns.
Personally I recommend the first half of Ivan Horton's Beginning C++ for any beginning to intermediate programmer. It's a little dated, but it does a great job of explaining what things look like in memory and why longs are not all the same size etc. It's clear without being overly verbose. And more importantly it's examples are strong examples of what type of code I want to read.
In his list of "Books Most Programmers Have Actually Read", I miss a book that I'm convinced that every self-respecting Mac OS X programmer read: Aaron Hillegass' "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X"
In short: "Please stop recommending books to others that you haven't read yourself."
I've really wondered how many people have actually read TAOCP, in particular. I haven't. I'm still trying to finish SICP (which is fantastic, IMHO, as is CTM), among others. It's too easy to just start reading yet another book, but the real value comes when you get past the first chapter or two - that's usually just rehashed intro material, anyway.
For discussion's sake, what are some programming books people consider worth reading that aren't Big Highly-Regarded Tomes?
I'm really fond of _The Little MLer_ (for understanding types), _Thinking Forth_ (a lot of good ideas about refactoring and general program design), and _Programming in Lua_ (as concise and well-written as K&R, lucidly covers material like coroutines and prototype-based OO). Any of them could also be mostly read in a weekend. Also, _Peopleware_, though it's more about the industry, project management, working in teams, etc.
I have, first edition even. :-) The first algorithms book that I really found readable was Sedgewick's Algorithms now updated to C, C++ and Java. Even now I will read Sedgewick first for clarity and go back to TAOCP or CLRS for analysis.
Meh. I'm not convinced. I've only read one book on his list of books programmers have actually read and have read more than half of the books (not AOCP or Dragon Book) on the list of book programmers haven't actually read.
I've not even heard of a few of the ones on the first list.
CLRS is a reasonable introduction to computer science, not programming. It starts off with basic concepts of the math in CS and then sorting algorithms -- just like any decent intro to CS course / book.
The C++ Programming Language is definitely not for language implementors. For that there's a (fairly accessible) language specification that's also published in book form, which is also useful as a reference for things which are out of scope for the The C++ Programming Language. It is, however, not a good intro book, and honestly, not a great reference book either. It's just that it's somewhat more comprehensive than other references.
I dunno about this. Of the books under "books most programmers have actually read," the only one I've read is the C programming language (K&R). But I think I'm probably more likely to read the GoF design patterns book or the rest of my college algorithms book ( http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Jon-Kleinberg/dp/0321... ) than Programming Pearls or Effective Java.
I read a large portion of the Dragon Book in University. It was interesting, but I didn't get all the way through it. I've honestly found books like "Refactoring" to be a more valuable a read.
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I'd put the gang of four design patterns book into the second category. Often, a book or journal article is there to be cited as a breakthrough work on a subject, but very few people read it - instead, they read the thousands of other, more easily accessible books and articles on the subject.
This is why "Head First Design Patterns" is in the "books I've read list", and "GOF" is in the books nobody reads list. GOF is on my shelf, and I've browsed through it, but I go to other sources to understand and implement design patterns.