StackOverflow is a question and answer community for programmers. Users can ask questions and then vote on the best answers. Back in 2009, someone asked: “What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?” The result is a crowdsourced list of the best books on programming in general, rather than a list of books about particular programming languages (for the most part).

The books with the most votes are:

1. Code Complete (2nd Ed) by Steve McConnell.
2. The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas.
3. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman and Julie Sussman.
4. The C Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie.
5. Introduction to Algorithms by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest and Clifford Stein.
6. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, John Brant, William Opdyke and Don Roberts.
7. Design Patterns by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides.
8. The Mythical Man-Month by Fredrick P. Brooks, Jr.
9. The Art of Computer Programming by Donald E. Knuth.
10. Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools by Alfred V. Aho, Monica S. Lam, Ravi Sethi and Jeffrey D. Ullman.

There were a couple of books not directly related to programming that received a large number of upvotes: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance, Robert Pirsig’s classic meditation on quality, and Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter’s epic study of recursion.

For another classic read on self-education for programmers check out Peter Norvig’s Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years.

Photo by totalAldo