2025 edition. this is very different from most "best books for programmers" lists you'll see, with Code Complete and Clean Code and Wistful Wanking for Practical Wankers and Design Slatterns and titles like that. you'll figure all that out as you go along. these are books to read so that you can cut motherfuckers with knives. do you need to read all of these? only if you want to know the things inside, i guess.
need you write in C or C++? not generally. but they are a lingua franca, implemented on most hardware you'll meet, and serve as the native API expression of all operating system that matter. rust is a pretty good language to write and read, and much less to talk about all the fucking time, so cut that shit out.
