http://aurellem.org/thoughts/html/sussman-reading-list.html
Written by: Gerald Sussman (compiled by Robert McIntyre)
Serving as a TA for Professor Sussman will get you three things: great advice, spectacular reading recommendations, and lots of high quality tea. I can't share the advice or the tea, but I can compile a reading list. Some of the materials on this list represent research paths that lead to unexplored territory. Some are textbooks that express concepts so clearly they will change your life and make you weep for joy. I hope that you will get something interesting out of this reading list, wherever you are in life – there's stuff I wish I knew about in middle school, and there are things I can't wait to read this summer. Enjoy!
How many of these have you read? The only one I did is SICP.
Bible, Talmud, Koran
How do all three of these religious books make one a better programmer, mathematician, and scientist?
Protip: They don't.
>>4
Then why are those religious books on the reading list?
>>5
Apparently because Sussman thinks high schoolers should read them. Notice that nowhere does it state that the books in the list are supposed to "make one a better programmer, mathematician, and scientist".
I didn't read The Feynman Lectures on Physics or learn about general relativity in high school. Am I really late to the party? I fear that I may have wasted lots of time that I could have used to learn more about the natural world.
Don't worry about potentially lost historical opportunities. You should worry about being unprepared for future opportunities.