[Tutor] Recommended texts for self-study to master software engineering?

[boB Stepp]

This is obviously not a directly python-related question; however, I
do believe that it would be of interest to many aspiring programmers
who are diligently learning python on their own.

In my case what I would eventually like to be able to do is develop
complex, graphically intensive educational software. An example of
such an application might be a virtual chemistry laboratory that
attempts to come as close as possible to mimicking in the virtual
world what one would experience taking a chemistry lab course. Such a
course might be either web-based or a strictly desktop application or
a mixture of both.

So, through self-study, I would like to be able to acquire the
knowledge I would need to become a competent designer and programmer,
using good software engineering practices. Now I could go online and
look at typical courses taken by those pursuing software engineering
or computer science degrees and even come up with the textbooks that
such courses use. But I would have no idea of how well-suited such
textbooks would be for self-study. So my question is what would be a
sequence of books to acquire the knowledge I would need that are
especially well-suited to self-study? I may be asking for the
unanswerable, but I am hoping to be pointed to some good texts for my
future studies.

[As a reminder, I already have a B.Sc. in physics with some graduate
work in same, so math, etc. is not an issue. I am not looking to
replicate going back to college. ~(:>)) ]

As always, many thanks in advance!
boB