Ask HN: What's the best technical eBook you have read?

Lately: http://exploringarduino.com/

Eloquent Javascript : A Modern Introduction to Programming by Marijn Haverbeke http://eloquentjavascript.net

Imho, the first chapter is a must-read for anyone in the industry, even and maybe especially if not a developer.

"When a program works, it is beautiful. The art of programming is the skill of controlling complexity. The great program is subdued, made simple in its complexity."

... and also, maybe not as "mindblowing" as Eloquent Javascript, but really good for diving deep in a low-level land (yet made very accessible in this book) that is probably overlooked by most of us when optimizing a web app for speed :

High-Performance Browser Networking by Ilya Grigorik http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1230000000545/index.ht...

I second your praise of Django docs. They're a good example of how technical docs should be written. I think the team behind Django even wrote an article on how to write good docs. My gut feeling is that the docs is part of the reason Djangos is so popular because anyone new to web frameworks would find it easiest to pick up Django.

Dependency Injection in .NET by Mark Seemann: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1935182501

This book profoundly changed how I look at computers (and other things).

http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/

Petzold's style is narrative, but make no mistake: every sentence is carefully chosen. I recommend resisting the urge to skim, lest you have to backtrack later...