Very good list. I've been compiling a list for a while now using google notebook. Its a big mess and many of the books I have yet to read but it links to a few good lists such as the ones on joelonsoftware and onstartups.

http://www.google.com/notebook/public/14636089903511277449/BDQiPSgoQ98yW0vQh

Also python: long tail is a good read, drags out a bit though. Possibly more my attention span at fault there.

Dan, thank you for sharing that awesome list. Joel's recommended books are great; in fact, back when I was developing a micro ISV, I used to turn to Joel's website for advice. That is where I discovered Paul Graham's "Hackers and Painters". Since then, I have shifted my allegiance to a new mentor :) I think the book brought three major changes in how I think:

1. Think big: Since I was developing a micro ISV, I had never really considered scaling the business to millions of customers (aka users). "Hackers and Painters" entered my life just a few weeks before I was about to launch my product; and I realized I had to develop something that can scale. I took a leap of faith and decided to instead pursue web startups; the opportunities for growth were many times in magnitude.

2. There are others like me: Toronto, Canada is not exactly a Silicon Valley. So uptil then, I didn't know there were so many other young entrepreneurs pursuing the same goals as me. Eventhough I wasn't acquainted with other hackers, I could at least gain a sense of security that I am not alone.

3. The Art of the Start: The single most valuable lesson I learned from Paul's book was the governing dynamics of web startups. Before reading it, there was not much inspiration or reason to think big because even if I did venture into online startups, I wouldn't know what to do.

While I have read some excellent books, I can credit Paul's work for watering the first seeds.

great list. I'll take some time to go through this. To this I'd add the

- JOS software reading list [0]

- JOS management reading list [1]

There are gaps in these lists but pretty much cover the best for both programmers & business - types. But the lists needs updating as I note pg's 'Painters & Hackers' is not listed nor is Cal Hendersons 'Building Scalable Websites' [3].

Reference

[0] Joel On Software 'Book Review, reading list'

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html

[1] Joel On Software, 'Management reading list'

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBACurriculum.html

[3] Cal Henderson, 'Building Scalable Web Sites, 978-0596102357':

http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites-Applications/dp/0596102356

Hackers and Painters is on my list three times :)

I'm going to have to check out Cal Hendersons book sometime but first I have to make a good site then I can worry about scaling it.

Cal addresses that by arranging his book in roughly the order that you should think about things. He recommends that you think about:

1. Version control

2. Issue tracking

3. One-click deploy

4. Internationalization

5. Security

before you start building your application, then you build and release it, then (and only then) start thinking about:

6. Email

7. Web services

8. Scalability

9. Statistics & monitoring

10. APIs

This mostly squares with my experiences (both with my own startup - currently on step 3, with 4, 5 and a launch-ready app already done - and working for others). The only changes I'd make are:

1. Move statistics and monitoring up the priority list, before launch. You want that data available to drive feature implementation.

2. I'm of two minds on internationalization. I think that most apps can wait until they're popular before they need to internationalize. However, i18n is really difficult to do later, after you've already built an app. I watched LiveJournal go through the process, and it wasn't pretty. So even though you don't need it, you may want to do it upfront because it'll be much harder later.

Now I think I need this book. Your right about stats, I would move them to number 6 or perhaps even to prelaunch.

yeah shows how much I read. Hence why i like short lists. Take the time to also listen to CH on Carson Workshops [0] & this one [1]. Also check out the O'Reilly chapter from the book [2].

[0] Carson Workshops, 'The Future of Web Apps, carsonworkshops.com/summit, Cal Henderson'

http://media.libsyn.com/media/carsonsystems/Cal_Henderson.mp3

[1] Carson Workshops, 'Building Enterprise Web Apps on a Budget – How We Built Flickr, ~ 10Mb, 10 min.'

http://odeo.com/audio/1207043/view

[2] O'Reilly, 'O'Reilly, Building Scalable Web Sites, Cal Henderson. Chapter 5: Data Integrity and Security, ~ 5Mb'.

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/web2apps/chapter/index.html

Ahh, if only google notebook would actually structure the data in a pretty way just like your numbered citations

the question is ... can you extract your data?

Then you can do with it, what you like! This is the bane of my existence and I want to own this problem!

"The Long Tail" is definitely worth reading, although I sort of felt it was a topic that only deserved a long essay expanded into an entire book. Then again, I felt the same way about "The Tipping Point" - interesting idea and points, but it probably could have made just as big an impact in a book half the size.