A Programmer's Bookshelf

An anonymous reader writes "With christmas just round the corner I have been looking for gifts for my geek friends. But what book? I recently found a simple page with one person's bookshelf and explain what's good and what's not. What do you think? Whats on a programmer's bookshelf? (or what should be and is not!)"

And just as importantly...

[tcopeland]

...do you group your books by color or by topic? Especially the O'Reilly books... does the Sendmail one go in your "mail server" books? Does the pink Python book go next to the pink CVS book or next to the red and white Ruby book? Decisions decisions!

Nice to see that he's got his Knuths... although, if he's like me, they get opened about twice a year.

Missing:

[Anonymous Coward]

A stash of porn magazines.

Obviously missing is...

[Advocadus Diaboli]

... a book like "how do I protect my website from being slashdotted" :-)

Re:And just as importantly...

[Eivind Eklund]

That often? Mine get opened every 3 years or so, when I make another attempt at reading them...

Eivind (Eek).

Re:Bookshelf?

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I need woman

Re:Nothing

[indifferent children]

Actually, I do have an O'Reilly CSS book in my drawer, but I never use it (because I cannot search it).

You do know that books had Indices before databases, right?

Re:And just as importantly...

[tcopeland]

The first 30-40 pages of mine are fairly wrinkled... the last 500 pages are as fresh and as clean as the day they were purchases. Ah well.

Now here's a fine tome [pmdapplied.com]. I hear the author is a really cool guy, too.

What programmers really need.

[balls199]

History of My Life (Volumes I & II) [amazon.com]
U.S.S. [amazon.com]
Body Language Secrets: A Guide During Courtship & Dating [amazon.com]
The System: How to Get Laid Today! [amazon.com]

Everything else can be looked up on the internet.

Re:Bookshelf?

[bhsurfer]

Probably the kind that are all stuck together...

Re:PARENT NOT OFFTOPIC!

[aurelian]

One of the BEST gifts I ever recieved was from a neighbors wife.

Had to read that one twice - missed the 'from' first time.

Re:PARENT NOT OFFTOPIC!

[ojustgiveitup]

Just make sure not to put the Marx next to the Rand, they might rip each other to shreds.

Re:And just as importantly...

[TheRaven64]

I hear that in the newer editions pages 100-500 are blank.

Sadly...

[sbszine]

"...do you group your books by color or by topic? Especially the O'Reilly books... does the Sendmail one go in your "mail server" books? Does the pink Python book go next to the pink CVS book or next to the red and white Ruby book? Decisions decisions!" As a truly tragic geek, I order mine (using spine colour) by the electromagnetic spectrum. So Programming PHP (green) goes before Programming Perl (blue), etc.