The hardest question to answer on a job interview

What do? Obviously you gotta bullshit a little bit to make it sound like you read tech articles and shit... but... who honestly spends their free time doing that?

Principles of Political Economy, John Stuart Mill (1848).

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, APA (2013).

A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume (1740).

The Bell Curve

...Any serious answers?

Hardly technical my friend.

books are for fags

The talmud
The bible
The quran

The Blueprint Decoded by RSD.

>he didn't read SICP today

...

All three of my answers were deadly serious. I posted them separately because I thought this thread would 404 before I had got round to thinking of the next one (though they are in no particular order).

Less technical works that have had a profound effect on my perception would have included The Bell Curve, the Turner Diaries, The Wealth of Nations, Capital, the SCUM Manifesto, Atlas Shrugged, The Law, Politics, Poetics, Republic and The Gay Science.

Again, symbolic representations of morality and folk-myth are not exactly technical, however valuable.

...reading the manual?

I've never been asked this question in an interview.

>hackers playbook 2
It changed the way I build labs and testing environments at home
>JavaScript from novice to ninja
It made me realise not all books are dull dry references, and there are enjoyable books in the realm.
>Visual Basic for students 2008
I think that was the title. It was a small, printed book with a spine with those black clippy bits; not a commercial book at all. I got given it from my IT lecturer when I was in high school. It really made me interested in programming and building things; the ability to quickly prototype things with visual elements, and then flip into the code with ease was a real turning point for me. I didn't know programming could be like that

SICP
Design Patterns
[spoiler]Masters of Doom[/spoiler]

>who honestly spends their free time doing that?
people with jobs. if you can't answer this question, i wouldn't hire you either.
i would expect you to have read some RFC, ISO, or ECMA standard documents if you're making things like an IRC client/server, DNS server, control function library, etc. i would expect you to have read Effective C++, Modern Effective C++, or Exceptional C++ Style if you're actually interested in pursuing C++ as your main skill. i would expect you to read something like Deep C Secrets if you're actually interested in how C is used in the industry and edge cases that may arise.
there, you already have a wealth of things you can use to answer this question. and we haven't even gone into all of the possible articles made available by professional programmers, like "What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory," or the articles that might have inspired you to pursue a specific subject (e.g. articles on Deepmind's AlphaGo AI or that cute robot girl speaking in front of some middle-east crowd).
if you're really having such a hard time answering this question, you should reconsider what you want to do for a living.

T. someone who has never worked a real job in their life

Philosophical Investigations
Mein Kampf
Industrial Society and its Future

you got me, i'm really unemployed and still felt qualified to give advice on how to get employed

The koran,
Mein Kampf
communist manifesto

I care about your opinion.

just write three times "BLACK LIVES MATTER"
you will get the job in no time. you could get into an ivy even

oh i see this is a troll thread, probably like that "what's a good arch linux desktop environment" one that's been coming up recently

>Reflections on Trusting Trust
Communications of the ACM 27, 8 (Aug 1984)
761-763

>Buridan's Principle
Foundations of Physics 42, 8 (August 2012) 1056-1066

I'm not sure on the third, maybe
>The Little Schemer
MIT Press, 1996

The Art of Computer Science Volume 1
The Art of Computer Science Volume 2
The Art of Computer Science Volume 3

1. Calculus early transcedentals
The complete basics of mathematics, plus a great motivator to get you interested in them

2. 10 algorithms in Data Mining (Wu et al. 2007)
Shows the state of the art and the basics of what one can do. A bit dated today, but 8 of those 10 algorithms are still industry standard in ML, and I wouldn't call one experienced in ML without knowing all of these

3. Murphy's machine learning book
It's free and gives you, outside of college, the access to most if not all you need to know to for a basic understanding of the ML field. Shows the important relations to statistics which are essential for understanding the background but often disregarded

H-how did I do?

I make it a point to read the bitcoin and ethereum whitepapers every day

>Masters of Doom

Mein nigger

The Systematic Oppression of Women in Technology

By: A White Male With Thick Rimmed Black Glasses Who Is Not In Technology

The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Gang of Four
Learn you a Haskell For Great Good

pretty okay if you're going for an internship
you'll wanna ditch that calculus textbook for something else when you can. in general, try to steer away from common textbooks if you can. that will give you a uniqueness factor, and show that you go beyond your curriculum.

The Gnu Manifesto
The SCUM Manifesto
Mein Kampf