Alan Kay's list of recommended reading
www.squeakland.orgSomething I find fascinating about this list is how diverse it is. Out of 100 or so books, only five relate directly to computers. The others come from a multitude of fields. I suspect such breadth is common amongst most of the greatest software innovators - people like Engelbart, Kay, etc. Knowing how to program is useful, but without breadth (and some depth) in other areas, your innovations are unlikely to have depth of their own.
John Walker, founder of AutoCAD and programming demi-god, has a reading list that will blow your mind: http://www.fourmilab.ch/fourmilog
I've been tipped off to several good books here.
Not to mention this...
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/
And my mind didn't even buy the list dinner first.
Wow. Just reading the summaries makes my head spin (in a nice way).
No Aristotle in the philosophy section?
"Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle.
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart.
'I drink, therefore I am.'"
Wow, I can't believe this is here! I was just thinking that and then I thought "No one is going to care" and there you were, caring. Thank you!
As a programmer I especially care as the epistemology in Aristotle's Organon lies at the core of how our startup models concepts and logical relations between them. Fred Sommer's work on extending that is also extremely helpful, not to mention H. W. B. Joseph's incredible book on logic, the best I've ever read (and I read many) _An Introduction to Logic_.
He's read his share of books...
of highly theoretical books..
about a wide variety of topics...