Any recommendations for a good book about programming?

Maybe you should take a look at Alan Turing’s work on B-type machines.

All the programming books done by O’Reilly have an excellent reputation, and I believe they are available both in hardcover and eBook format.

You’ll find that books that are language-agnostic like that are few and far between. Why? Because the best way to teach computer programming theory, is to teach computer programming. If you’re looking for a language that’s not hard to learn, so you can focus on the design aspect of what you’re doing, then my recommendation would be to choose a higher-level language, like Java, Python, or Lisp. If you’re not after programming specifically, then you might also consider intro engineering books, as they’ll cover the same types of concepts, engineers basically being professional problem-solvers. Look for the type that are used as introductory-level college texts.

If you’re looking to ensure you produce great code, a great language agnostic(ish) tool to use is the design pattern. These are structures defined to help solve common programming issues, and are a great way to help ensure good design of your application.

The definitive book on this is “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software”, published in 1994 (Gamma et al.), however this obviously assumes an object orientated language like Java/C++/C#.

Other books exist for other types of language.

I recommend learning by doing. Books can’t teach you everything, you need the mindset.

Java for Dummies actually really helped me get a concept of how things actually worked.

(Laugh. Now. You know you want to.)

lolz I loved that book.