Good books in computer science?

[koranthala]

> There are huge numbers (millions?) of lousy programmers who program every
> single day and never become good programmers.

I think I can attest to that.
I was a programmer (in a low level language) in a huge MNC code monkey
shop for > 7 years.
I consider myself to be Ok - not great, but not very poor either.
I had written a lot of code in those 7 years, but due to lack of
exposure and laziness, never knew that I have to read books.
As I mentioned before, I come in from a non-computing engineering
degree, so I did not even know which books to read etc.

I had seen many of the frameworks written by others, and was extremely
impressed. I considered those people who wrote those frameworks to be
geniuses - until I accidently came across one site where I read about
GOF.
I bought it and read it - and straight away understood that whatever I
learned in the last 7 years, I could have learned most of them in 6
months, provided I had read the right books. All the frameworks were
just amalgamation of these patterns.

Now, I voraciously purchase and read books - both in the domain of my
work and on computer science in general. Even though I am not going to
be recruited by google any time soon :-), I think I have become a much
better programmer over the last one year. I see my code before 1 year
and I am horrified :-).

Practice makes perfect only if you push yourself - and you need
exposure to know that.