Jason Gregory's "Game Engine Architecture" is very well written, and you can actually read it cover to cover. Highly recommended.

https://www.amazon.com/Engine-Architecture-Second-Jason-Greg...

This book is really good:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014DIV1IO/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

I've been using Unity for the last 3 years and that book covers a good chunk of what it takes to make a performant game with it. Good books on Unity are hard to come by. Also highly recommend this book if you are just learning about game and simulation engines:

https://www.amazon.com/Engine-Architecture-Second-Jason-Greg...

Few things consistently blow my mind as insane graphics demos

https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4dfGzS (or basically anything on that site)

How is that 400 lines of code.

Or this one which even generates the sound on the GPU

https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4ts3z2

With the wide adoption of WebGL, it's a good time to get involved in graphics. Furthermore, GPUs are taking over esp. with the advent of machine learning (nvidia stock grew ~3x, amd ~5x last year). The stuff nvidia has been recently doing is kinda crazy. I wouldn't be surprised if in 15 years, instead of AWS, we are using geforce cloud or smth, just because nvidia will have an easier time building a cloud offering than amazon will have building a gpu.

These are some good resources to get started with graphics/games

# WebGL Programming Guide: Interactive 3D Graphics Programming with WebGL

https://www.amazon.com/WebGL-Programming-Guide-Interactive-G...

Historically, C++ has definitely been THE language for doing graphics but if you are starting these these, you would have to have really compelling reasons to start with C++ and not JavaScript and WebGL. And that's coming from someone who actually likes C++ and used to write it professionally.

# Book of Shaders

https://thebookofshaders.com/

# Game Programming Patterns

http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html

https://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Patterns-Robert-Nyst...

HN's own @munificent wrote a book discussing the most important design patterns in game design. Good book applicable beyond games.

# Game engine architecture

https://www.amazon.com/Engine-Architecture-Second-Jason-Greg...

# Computer graphics: Principles and Practice

https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice...

This is more of college textbook if you'd prefer that but the WebGL one is more accessible and less dry.

# Physically Based Rendering & Real-Time Rendering

These discuss some state of the art techniques in computer graphics. I'm not going to claim to have really read them but from what I've seen they are very solid.

https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice...

https://www.amazon.com/Physically-Based-Rendering-Third-Impl...

I have found the book "Game Engine Architecture" a really interesting read, and a seemingly good introduction to the required concepts: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1466560010

As a senior dev who's just started to dabble in games I've found Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory to be very useful and high quality.

Oh looks like there's a second edition coming out at some point http://www.amazon.com/dp/1466560010