5 ms·

Five Memorable Books About Programming

27 points by dpapathanasiou 19y ago

slackerIII 19y ago
I always have to plug Managing Gigabytes whenever a discussion of computer books comes up. Great reference for anyone dealing with searching or compressing large amounts of information: http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Gigabytes-Compressing-Multimedia-Information/dp/1558605703 http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Gigabytes-Compressing-Multime...
phaedrus 19y ago
The best book I ever read about programming was Writing Solid Code, by Steve Macquire.
- slackerIII 19y ago
  That was a great one. His malloc wrapper was a life saver, and getting into the habit of adding lots of assertions was really helpful for me.
Locke 19y ago
Hmmm... my own list of memorable programming books would look like (in no specific order): 1. The Mythical Man Month, Brooks 2. Peopleware, DeMarco and Lister 3. Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming, Norvig 4. The C Programming Language, Kernighan and Ritchie 5. The Ruby Way, Fulton I had a hard time deciding whether or not to include the Pragmatic Programmer, in the end I decided to go with The Ruby Way because it was an unusually enjoyable read for a language book. I know the original list was supposed to be more esoteric books, not classics, but I'm anticipating this becoming a thread of everyone's favorites. : ))
- run4yourlives 19y ago
  Have to put in a strong seconding of Peopleware and MMM. Certainly two must reads.
- comatose_kid 19y ago
  I'm just beginning PAIP - I finally broke down and bought it when borders emailed me a 40% off coupon. CS books aren't supposed to be readable, but so far this one seems to break that rule.
  - pchristensen 19y ago
    I think PAIP is underrated (or maybe just unknown) because a) AIMA replaced it as the go-to AI text, b) there's no free online version (unlike SICP, PCL, OnLisp, etc), c) it's expensive. But it's probably my favorite of all the Lisp books I'm looking at now.
npk 19y ago
Expert C Programming by Peter van der Linden
- comatose_kid 19y ago
  Yeah, that's a good one. Well written, and a great book to read after you've read K&R and have been programming C for a while. It gets into the corner cases, and has a nice explanation for why certain declarations cause errors, etc.
prakash 19y ago
Joel Spolsky's list: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html
wheels 19y ago
- Introduction to Algorithms (MIT Press). This is the only one of my computer science textbooks that I consistently refer back to. It's elegant and timeless and covers a lot of ground. - Design Patterns. Dry, boring, useful. You can skim it and get most of the ideas. The best part about it is building up a vocabulary for discussing common patterns with other software engineers. - Programming Perl. Ah, the camel book. It's possibly the only written-by-the-language-designer reference that's fun to read. Regardless of what your favorite scripting language is, you have to love Larry Wall. - The Mythical Man Month. Another classic. Easy to read. Stuff people should know, but don't. - The Design of Everyday Things. Not really a programming book strictly, but a nice introduction to the principles of usability. If you can get over the slight smugness, it can shake up the way you think a bit.
simplegeek 19y ago
1. Programming Pearls & More Programming Pearls, Jon Bentley. 2. SICP and The Litle Schemer. 3. K&R 4. Find the Bug by Adam Barr (I read it after reading a Guy Steele recommendation for this one and it's awesome. Author is a cool hacker, writer and a PM at Microsoft (his other book Serving my corporate Masters was available online. Not sure about now):-) 5. Hackers Delight
konsl 19y ago
I would think Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by the gang of four is the most famous -- I can't say I've read any books on programming that I felt were "memorable"
bayareaguy 19y ago
Here are 5 of my favorites nobody has mentioned here yet: - The Art of Computer Programming, Knuth - The Algorithm Design Manual, Skiena - The Practice of Programming, Kernighan and Pike - ACM Turing Award Lectures - Applied Cryptography, Schneier

I always have to plug Managing Gigabytes whenever a discussion of computer books comes up. Great reference for anyone dealing with searching or compressing large amounts of information: http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Gigabytes-Compressing-Multimedia-Information/dp/1558605703 http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Gigabytes-Compressing-Multime...

phaedrus 19y ago

The best book I ever read about programming was Writing Solid Code, by Steve Macquire.

slackerIII 19y ago
That was a great one. His malloc wrapper was a life saver, and getting into the habit of adding lots of assertions was really helpful for me.

Locke 19y ago

Hmmm... my own list of memorable programming books would look like (in no specific order): 1. The Mythical Man Month, Brooks 2. Peopleware, DeMarco and Lister 3. Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming, Norvig 4. The C Programming Language, Kernighan and Ritchie 5. The Ruby Way, Fulton I had a hard time deciding whether or not to include the Pragmatic Programmer, in the end I decided to go with The Ruby Way because it was an unusually enjoyable read for a language book. I know the original list was supposed to be more esoteric books, not classics, but I'm anticipating this becoming a thread of everyone's favorites. : ))

run4yourlives 19y ago
Have to put in a strong seconding of Peopleware and MMM. Certainly two must reads.
comatose_kid 19y ago
I'm just beginning PAIP - I finally broke down and bought it when borders emailed me a 40% off coupon. CS books aren't supposed to be readable, but so far this one seems to break that rule.
- pchristensen 19y ago
  I think PAIP is underrated (or maybe just unknown) because a) AIMA replaced it as the go-to AI text, b) there's no free online version (unlike SICP, PCL, OnLisp, etc), c) it's expensive. But it's probably my favorite of all the Lisp books I'm looking at now.

npk 19y ago

Expert C Programming by Peter van der Linden

comatose_kid 19y ago
Yeah, that's a good one. Well written, and a great book to read after you've read K&R and have been programming C for a while. It gets into the corner cases, and has a nice explanation for why certain declarations cause errors, etc.

prakash 19y ago

Joel Spolsky's list: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html

wheels 19y ago

- Introduction to Algorithms (MIT Press). This is the only one of my computer science textbooks that I consistently refer back to. It's elegant and timeless and covers a lot of ground. - Design Patterns. Dry, boring, useful. You can skim it and get most of the ideas. The best part about it is building up a vocabulary for discussing common patterns with other software engineers. - Programming Perl. Ah, the camel book. It's possibly the only written-by-the-language-designer reference that's fun to read. Regardless of what your favorite scripting language is, you have to love Larry Wall. - The Mythical Man Month. Another classic. Easy to read. Stuff people should know, but don't. - The Design of Everyday Things. Not really a programming book strictly, but a nice introduction to the principles of usability. If you can get over the slight smugness, it can shake up the way you think a bit.

simplegeek 19y ago

1. Programming Pearls & More Programming Pearls, Jon Bentley. 2. SICP and The Litle Schemer. 3. K&R 4. Find the Bug by Adam Barr (I read it after reading a Guy Steele recommendation for this one and it's awesome. Author is a cool hacker, writer and a PM at Microsoft (his other book Serving my corporate Masters was available online. Not sure about now):-) 5. Hackers Delight

konsl 19y ago

I would think Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by the gang of four is the most famous -- I can't say I've read any books on programming that I felt were "memorable"

bayareaguy 19y ago

Here are 5 of my favorites nobody has mentioned here yet: - The Art of Computer Programming, Knuth - The Algorithm Design Manual, Skiena - The Practice of Programming, Kernighan and Pike - ACM Turing Award Lectures - Applied Cryptography, Schneier