Reddit mentions of Higher-Order Perl: Transforming Programs with Programs

Here are some books that I feel have made me better professionally. They tend toward the comp sci side, some are more useful than others.

• Bioinformatics: An Active Learning Approach: Excellent exercises and references. I think most chapters evolved out of blog posts if you don't want to buy the book.
  
• Higher Order Perl: I like perl to start with, so your mileage may vary. But learning how to implement an iterator in a language that doesn't have that concept was enlightening. There is a similar book for Python but I don't remember what it's called. Also, you are likely to run into some Perl at some point.
  
• SICP: Power through it, it's worth it. I did not do all the exercises, but do at least some of the first ones to get the ideas behind Scheme. Free PDFs exist, also free youtube vids.
  
• The C Programming Language: Everyone should know at least a little C. Plus so much has evolved from it that it helps to understand your foundations. Free PDFs exist
  
• The Rust Programming Language: Read this after the C book and after SICP. It explains a lot of complex topics very well, even if you don't use Rust. And by the end, you will want to use Rust! :) It's free!
  
  Lastly, find some open source projects and read their papers, then read their code (and then the paper again, then the code...etc)! Then find their blogs and read those too. Then find them on Twitter and follow them. As others have said, the field is evolving very quickly, so half the battle is information sourcing.