Timeless volumes on Application development

Over at Joel on Software Ranjit posted about which programming books are timeless.  I think it is rather telling how computing and application development has evolved over the last 15 years.  In the beginning we had only programming language reference manuals.  From there we evolved to network application development focusing on sockets, then RPC, then distributed object frameworks like CORBA, RMI, DCOM, and Remoting.  Hmmh, at this point, I'm thinking with Web Services we've made a full trip back to the RPC days, maybe think of the DCE directory as UDDI, but here DCE directory services is fuller featured...  Ack, I better stop with that thought, it will be a post for another day.  Back to the timeless volumes theme.

I actually cleaned up my bookshelves recently as I had filled 3 large book shelves and was in need of another badly.  I was rarely pulling out more than 3-5 books a week.  So I packed up most of my java books, I can get java documentation online and hadn't cracked a java book since before '99.  I donated most of my recent MS Press volumes at the last ISV Community Days and kept all of my C++ books.  My prized possessions are:

•  Effective C++ and More Effective C++
• The Knuth volumes
• Programming Pearl ( I started my dev days as a UNIX sysadmin)
• Mastering Regular Expressions
• My most prized keep: my 4 volume set of 4.4 BSD lite reference manuals w/source code circa around 1990 (from my earliest freebsd days)