For anybody interested in programming, in particular in 3d graphics & game programming, here’s a list of the books & articles/websites that I found useful and most interesting:
Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs by Scott Meyers – probably my favorite programming book. Very nice approach and smart stuff.
More Effective C++: 35 New Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs by Scott Meyers – more coolness
Thinking in C++ by Bruce Eckel – A very nice post introduction to change your mind pathways
Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel – My introduction to Java. A very nice language, but I must admit for my speed oriented assembly/C background it never really formed roots, though the book I thought was brilliant
Effective STL: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of the Standard Template Library by Scott Meyers – STL is very cool, but this book I must be honest I found to be a bit too much for me
Sams Teach Yourself C++ In 21 Days by Jesse Liberty
C for Dummies by Dan Gookin – man this book was funny. I remember being kicked out in high school out of physics class despite being a local competition star for bursting out in laughter repeatedly because I was reading it under the table, my bad, but very very funny book :D
Teach Yourself Visual C++ 6 in 21 Days by Davis Chapman
C++ programming language introduction – can’t remember the author. A romanian writer, got the book from school, not the best book, but I forced myself to go through it in a weekend as I was moving over from assembly
Programming Windows Games With Borland C++ by Nabajyoti Barkakati – I think it was this book. I had gotten it in Romanian and don’t remember for sure. For me a great book. It went through topics as varied as game interface stuff and details off effects and even as far as some image file encoding algorithms. Way cool.
Assembly Programming – a romanian author I can’t remember. A bit dry and technical but I will never forget this book especially because it included some very useful (and back then for me hard to get) code bits about working with video memory, initializations and even the basics of creating a Terminate and Stay Resident application
Visual C++ in 12 Easy Lessons by Greg M. Perry & Ian Spencer
Pascal language – (forgot author) two books that I quickly forgot as I left Pascal for greener, faster and more graphics pastures :D
OpenGL Redbook – Dave Shreiner – great reference and learning
nehe.gamedev.net – might seem like just a website, but the lessons there (quite a lot of them) in many ways taught me more OpenGl than whole books on the topic with clean code and very nicely placed explanations, not to mention providing good code to start messing around with
gamedev.net – one of my favorite resources, full of fascinating articles and a great community with great programmers.
gamasutra.com – though I used it mostly for the game design articles occasionally I would also find very interesting programming articles there. I remember for example I really enjoyed a series of articles on curved surface programming and one on GPU shading languages in particular
graphicspapers.com – this was for me a a priceless collection of high end docs, usual brief and technical, Siggraph papers and the like, mostly academical and highly theoretical (often with math levels that I must admit were over my head). Seems to be broken/abandoned these days though.
codeguru.com – got some nice articles there
flipcode.com – used to be a fantastic resource for programmers, C++ & graphics stuff too! Met some really nice highly skilled people there.
PCGPE – to me the PC game programmer’s encyclopedia was a very valuable resource with it’s rich mix of docs, particularly in those off and on internet times
Michael Abrash’s Dr. Dobb’s Journal Articles – Little did I know when I got my first tastes of 3d graphics in those articles that the man writing them was the great father of PC graphics, assembly optimizations and general low level master of programming, writer of Zen of Assembly and Zen of Graphics Programming, yet even back then they were my super favorites