Book on explaining the basics of programming for inexperienced friends

Question

Hey all, I have a friend who's going to jail on Wednesday, for about a year. I want him to utilize his time in county learning how to program and about the internet so I can help him land a job when he gets out. What are some of the best books that teach programming basics, which languages do what, how servers & databases work, how the internet works in general, MVC, LAMP, SQL, ect., ect.. I've already taught him some basic HTML and explained how a function is called, but I'm about to run out of time.

Oh yeah, something other than "The Internet for Dummies" please!

Thanks!

Answer 1

Assuming that he won't be able to keep up with the latest "cool" technology/language/whatever I'd suggest to buy him mostly books about computer science rather than "programming php" or similar.

Something about maths, algorithms, OOP, functional programming, databases, http, unix and networks.

Does he have access to an actual computer? Otherwise learning how to program could be a tad difficult.

Answer 2

I don't know if your friends will have computer/internet access but I think that in order to learn any of the above technologies, a computer (with at least a compiler, if not an IDE) would be most useful.

Anyway, here are a few other SO post with some popular books:
List of freely available programming books
What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?
Language Books/Tutorials for popular languages