Fowler
Martin Fowler's book on
Refactoring is sneaky-brilliant. It describes a way of continuously improving software during development, a common-sense idea that is vaguely heretical but closely allied to the Extreme Programming/Agile Alliance movement. Each bit of the book seems self-evident, but in aggregate it will change the way you work. Fowler's Web site,
martinFowler.com, is very interesting as well, a superb example of the way personal Web journals intersect with professional life and with scholarship.