A problem is that in many cases it was long enough ago (e.g. I got into C programming in the 1980s, C++ around 1990) that I don’t remember the names of the other books I read. The ones that stuck in my mind were the memorably good ones. (Memorably bad things can do likewise of course, but few textbooks fall into that category—the point of this post after all is that textbooks tend to have higher standards than most media.)
A problem is that in many cases it was long enough ago (e.g. I got into C programming in the 1980s, C++ around 1990) that I don’t remember the names of the other books I read. The ones that stuck in my mind were the memorably good ones. (Memorably bad things can do likewise of course, but few textbooks fall into that category—the point of this post after all is that textbooks tend to have higher standards than most media.)