When looking for a good book to read, word of mouth can carry a lot of weight. Here are books and other resources that have been very insightful on my journey as a developer. Accompanied is a brief synopsis of what makes the particular item notable.

Recommended Texts:

PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy by David Powers

As the title suggests, this book discusses the way websites work and focuses on how to write server-side code using PHP. However, the strongest aspect of this book is how the lessons that it teaches can be generalized into many other areas in programming. This book stresses the process of sanitizing and handling user input and protecting your product from being misused (maliciously or otherwise). The book spends the last few chapters going through the fundamentals of database design and SQL – it does such a good job that I would recommend it on that alone. If my time in university made me book smart, then this book made me truly street smart.