A book I consider important

http://dump.udderweb.com/CODE.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Software/dp/0735611319

The author, Petzold, has been mentioned on /prog/ before, but AFAIK only in the context of his MS Windows books.

This one is different, because it helped me understand the nature of information, how it is part of reality and was so even before people existed.  In that way, it helped me understand what functional programming is.  (I'm sure that there is more than one path to that place, but this is the one I took.)

>>75
Books, music and software among other things are creative intellectual works. It takes effort to create one. If you go down the path of equating them to mere patterns of 0s and 1s then you're belittling the authors and not compensating them for their work. That's stealing.