Writing that changed how I think about programming languages

I would also highly recommend watching one of Rich Hickey's talks (especially the earlier ones). Watching those certainly changed how I thought about programming in general.

Skip “Simple made easy” because I cannot stand hearing that talk quoted by basically every single conference speaker in the last decade. It’s become its own cliché.

(Joking of course. I much prefer “Hammock driven development” but it’s not very corporate friendly)

You say that, but if there's one thing I wish more mid-level engineers understood better about good code it's the distinction between simple and easy.

Definitely the most influential for me along with Larry Wall's "Programming Perl".