 | Java In A Nutshell, 5th Edition by David Flanagan
Buy new: $29.67 / Used from: $17.94 Includes Java 5.0. Earlier editions had better API discussions but A) the APIs kept growing, and B) you want a book that's not too heavy to pick up. Doesn't replace Javadoc, but helps you figure out where to look.
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 | C# in a Nutshell by Peter Drayton
Buy used from: $0.46 Good handbook, poor textbook. The API section works as the index that the Microsoft doc set lacks.
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 | C++ How to Program (4th Edition) by Harvey M. Deitel
Buy used from: $3.99 Chatty and overfull of examples, but clear and complete. Doesn't cover libraries or STL very well.
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 | Programming Perl (3rd Edition) by Larry Wall
Buy new: $32.97 / Used from: $3.97 If you write lots of shell scripts, you should probably be writing Perl instead. Good intro to the language, despite a "welcome to the club" style.
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 | Cascading Style Sheets 2.0 Programmer's Reference by Eric A. Meyer
Buy new: $15.59 / Used from: $0.01 Plays well with others - a necessary adjunct to most HTML books
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 | HTML Programmer's Reference by Thomas A. Powell
Buy used from: $0.01 Great for desk reference, but not the book for a beginner to learn from.
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 | JavaScript: The Definitive Guide by David Flanagan
Buy used from: $0.87 A bit heavy for someone who's mostly a web designer, but good for the hard-core programmer.
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 | The Web Programmer's Desk Reference by Lazaro Issi Cohen
Buy new: $40.46 / Used from: $5.85 As the subtitle says, a cross reference between HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Not for casual web developers, but great for people solving hard probelms that cross boundaries.
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 | XML 1.1 Bible by Elliotte Rusty Harold
Buy new: $26.39 / Used from: $4.83 Great intro to XML and its sister standards: CSS, XSL and FO, XLinks, schemas and more. Good description of DTDs. Doesn't replace books dedicated to CSS or XSL, and doesn't cover SAX or DOM.
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 | XSLT Programmer's Reference 2nd Edition by Michael H. Kay
Buy used from: $2.06 If you use XML, you'll use XML transformation sooner or later. That's where XSLT comes in - it's the transformation language.
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 | A Programmer's Introduction to PHP 4.0 by W. Jason Gilmore
Buy new: $34.95 / Used from: $1.94 Good if a) you're already a good programmer and b) you don't need to push PHP to the limits. OK for rote coding, bu weak on understanding.
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 | C Programming Language, 2nd Ed by Brian W. Kernighan
Buy used from: $42.00 Not K&R C (blessed be), but K&R on ANSI C. Still an important language, in maintenance and especially in embedded systems.
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 | The Standard C Library by P.J. Plauger
Buy new: $51.17 / Used from: $6.24 Not a language, strictly speaking, but you won't get far in C without its libraries
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 | The C++ Programming Language: Special Edition by Bjarne Stroustrup
Buy new: $47.61 / Used from: $32.10 Written in a nearly impenetrable stream of consciousness style and poorly indexed, but irreplaceably complete.
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 | The C++ Standard Template Library by P.J. Plauger
Buy new: $35.64 / Used from: $18.43 Maybe you can't program C without its libraries, but you shouldn't try to program C++ without the STL. Sometimes subtle, but well worth the effort.
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 | Parallel Programming in OpenMP by Rohit Chandra
Buy new: $30.79 / Used from: $27.29 Again, not a language itself, but a critical adjunct for parallelizing compute-intensive applications.
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 | Parallel Programming with MPI by Peter Pacheco
Buy new: $62.86 / Used from: $39.07 A big, complex API for solving big, complex problems in massively parallel computing. You'll need the spec from the standards organization, but you'll get started with this. OpenMP is simpler, but you don't always get to choose.
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 | Structuring XML Documents by David Megginson
Buy used from: $0.01 Very good for XML DTDs. Also very helpful for anyone serious about DocBook, or wants to see DocBook compared to other markup DTDs.
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 | Microsoft® DirectX® 9 Programmable Graphics Pipeline (Pro-Developer) by Kris Gray
Buy used from: $2.99 HLSL and shader asm - pretty good, but still looking for a better book.
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 | Mastering MATLAB 6 by Duane Hanselman
Buy new: $64.00 / Used from: $12.15 If you need more than a spreadsheet but less than a whole programming language, this is a workable choice.
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 | The Mathematica Book, Fifth Edition by Stephen Wolfram
Buy used from: $19.82 Maybe not as friendly as Matlab, but seems to have more power in the basic system.
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 | The Designer's Guide to VHDL, Second Edition (Systems on Silicon) by Peter J. Ashenden
Buy new: $74.75 / Used from: $18.73 Ada-like hardware description language. Ada-ugly, but has operator overloads, configuration control, and more.
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 | Verilog Digital Computer Design: Algorithms Into Hardware by Mark Arnold
Buy new: $89.00 / Used from: $10.17 Lower learning curve than VHDL, but lower ceiling, too.
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 | SystemC: From the Ground Up (the Kluwer International Series in Engineering & Computer Science) by David C. Black
Buy new: $159.00 / Used from: $158.51 Recently promoted to an IEEE standard. Not great, but a much better intro than the standard itself.
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 | Programming in Ada 95 (2nd Edition) (International Computer Science Series) by John Barnes
Buy used from: $28.98 Wordy and repetitive, but complete - much like ADA itself
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 | LaTeX: A Document Preparation System (2nd Edition) by Leslie Lamport
Buy new: $29.61 / Used from: $16.50 If you have no way out of using LaTex, this should get you by. (Not really a programming language, but a close neighbor.)
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 | Eiffel : The Language (Prentice Hall Object-Oriented Series) by Bertrand Meyer
Buy used from: $2.10 Hardly a mainstream programming language, but it's still around and has a loyal following. I got this to help understand some of the oddball features in Eiffel's type system.
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 | Arm Architecture Reference Manual
Buy used from: $19.97 Assembly language for a common embedded processor.
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