6 ms·

Computer Science textbooks that are freely available online

574 points by MrXOR 6y ago

2fourk 6y ago
This is a great post, so many good resources and information!!!
low_common 6y ago
Really helped me out when I was getting my CS degree. Some classes I'd use these free copies, but core classes ex. Algorithms I liked having the physical copy of CLRS.
ljhsiung 6y ago
Their link to "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (5th edition)" (https://booksite.elsevier.com/9780123838728/references.php https://booksite.elsevier.com/9780123838728/references.php) is broken. Here's a couple more [1],[2]. I'm also surprised Jeff Erickson's free lecture notes [3] aren't there given 1) its easy to remember domain 2) its incredibly high, practical quality. Practical because I've had interviews that just grab questions from the book, and also because his course is basically just a walk-through of the book. It's also very easy to read, and although I didn't do great in his class, his conceptual lessons still stick with me. [1] http://acs.pub.ro/~cpop/SMPA/Computer%20Architecture%20A%20Quantitative%20Approach%20(5th%20edition).pdf http://acs.pub.ro/~cpop/SMPA/Computer%20Architecture%20A%20Q... [2] https://github.com/Seanforfun/Books/blob/master/Computer/Computer%20Architecture%20-%20A%20Quantitative%20Approach%20(Fifth%20Edition).pdf https://github.com/Seanforfun/Books/blob/master/Computer/Com... [3] http://algorithms.wtf http://algorithms.wtf
- james_white 6y ago
  Couldn't recommend Jeff Erickson's lecture notes more for algorithms, DP, and the like. I too did rather poorly in the class so you're not alone! In a similar vein, Lawrence Angrave, a systems programming lecturer, has a wonderful crowd-sourced "book" [1] on all things systems programming. It is my go to resource for brushing up on these topics. Lastly, David Forsyth, a statistics/applied ML lecturer has a gold mine of a book for diving into ML and difficult concepts that come with it [2]. [1] https://github.com/angrave/SystemProgramming/wiki https://github.com/angrave/SystemProgramming/wiki [2] http://luthuli.cs.uiuc.edu/~daf/courses/AML-18/learning-book-19-April-18.pdf http://luthuli.cs.uiuc.edu/~daf/courses/AML-18/learning-book...
  - awnguyen 6y ago
    Sometimes I’m wondering why U of I doesn’t have a bigger presence in the online learning world, other than net math. The material is great.
    - willhslade 6y ago
      Illinois is going bankrupt to the degree that it’s affecting the U of I. They do, however, have both an iMBA and a masters in CS through coursera.
- david38 6y ago
  Jeff was one of my favorite teachers. He made algorithms and proofs fun, even if you didn’t get an A.
irateswami 6y ago
I had a lot of qualms with my CS education, the professors in particular, but I have to hand it to them they always either tried to have the book and material online for free, or would use the international edition of whatever textbook we needed. Textbooks, and higher education in general, are a complete ripoff for 90% of people doing it.
- ldjb 6y ago
  Nothing worse than courses that require a textbook written by the lecturer decades ago and is now out-of-print, with only one copy in the library that all the students have to fight over.
  - harry8 6y ago
    Yeah there is. Courses that require you to purchase the lecturer's terrible quality printed and photocopied(!) Unpublished "Lecture notes" At least a garbage textbook damages their reputation in their field.
    - irateswami 6y ago
      I had a garbage math professor in college who did this, total bullshit.
gmfawcett 6y ago
An obligatory mention of the /r/csbooks subreddit, where we share titles like these: https://www.reddit.com/r/csbooks/ https://www.reddit.com/r/csbooks/
- mathnmusic 6y ago
  Hoping that it's okay to share LearnAwesome's (my open-source project) computer-science topic page here: https://learnawesome.org/topics/2680f6d5-b662-4cc3-99e5-e748e744d875-computer-science https://learnawesome.org/topics/2680f6d5-b662-4cc3-99e5-e748...
pron 6y ago
By no means a textbook, just a barely-edited book-length anthology of primary sources I put together, but let me plug my own: Finite of Sense and Infinite of Thought: A History of Computation, Logic and Algebra https://pron.github.io/computation-logic-algebra https://pron.github.io/computation-logic-algebra
- bambataa 6y ago
  I enjoyed your introduction to TLA+, so looking forward to this. Thank you.
- blewboarwastake 6y ago
  The Bibliography is definitively useful but the editing and commentary is really good too. I'll bookmark it and will keep reading later.
- epilys 6y ago
  Do you have plans on publishing an epub?
  - pron 6y ago
    Not currently. Seems like a lot of work, especially with all the margin notes and figures. But if you could suggest tools that might make this easier, I'd give them a look.
blackrock 6y ago
Fascinating list. Thanks.
ipodopt 6y ago
In the same vein: https://github.com/ossu/computer-science https://github.com/ossu/computer-science
ipodopt 6y ago
In the vein's shadow: [audio books] http://audiobookbay.nl/ http://audiobookbay.nl/ [books] http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ [research papers] https://sci-hub.do/ https://sci-hub.do/
boblivion 6y ago
https://toc.cryptobook.us/ https://toc.cryptobook.us/ A comprehensive introduction to provable cryptography that is comparatively modern.
- ljhsiung 6y ago
  That exact link is already included.
amir734jj 6y ago
Kind of unrelated, I am wondering does anyone know a good CS lecture note websites? There was a one I saw here few months ago but I forgot the URL.
- treeman79 6y ago
  https://youtu.be/ywWBy6J5gz8 https://youtu.be/ywWBy6J5gz8 Learn Quicksort via tap dancing.
rckoepke 6y ago
https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/index https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/index has 100% free interactive versions of high quality textbooks. They use a JavaScript implementation of Python which runs in the browser (Skulpt) to provide a REPL. Example Textbooks: Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures using Python (3rd edition)
- vram22 6y ago
  I had blogged about them, but for a different reason, also interactive - online turtle graphics: Online turtle graphics in Python from Runestone Interactive: https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2013/02/online-turtle-graphics-in-python-from.html?m=0 https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2013/02/online-turtle-graphics-i... Had also mentioned that anyone can host a course there for free.
jagger27 6y ago
https://opendatastructures.org/ https://opendatastructures.org/ is quite good.
- kyawzazaw 6y ago
  I wish this has syntax highlighting
aronpye 6y ago
I wish these lists were better curated rather than just a dump of links with no commentary.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ipodopt 6y ago
  https://github.com/ossu/computer-science https://github.com/ossu/computer-science
  - aronpye 6y ago
    Still doesn’t really explain the contents of any of the linked courses or why you need to take them. The only decent teach yourself computer science program I have come across is https://teachyourselfcs.com/ https://teachyourselfcs.com/
    - ipodopt 6y ago
      It gives you a complete minimally ordered set to high quality a CS education. > Still doesn’t really explain the contents of any of the linked courses or why you need to take them That is the job of the course lecturer or author who know best. It is always done in the first lecture of any course and is provided in written form in the syllabus. All you need to do click on the links....
riknos314 6y ago
Runestone academy has a good collection of interactive online textbooks https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/index https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/index Disclaimer: I helped build this platform as a student
- isaacdl 6y ago
  Hey, I worked on Runestone as a student too, with Brad! Small world :).
st1x7 6y ago
Thanks for sharing, this is great. It's also a bit intimidating and overhwelming. There is so much to learn and there is also a danger of just getting through textbooks that cover the same material that you've read before or covering stuff on a surface level without getting any practice with what you've learned. As a data scientist, it feels like anything from mathematics, computer science, statistics, large-scale systems, software engineering in general is within my domain and there is a real danger of spreading oneself a bit too thin and not getting that good at anything.
- artificialLimbs 6y ago
  Exactly what I'm going through as a junior programmer. I have no idea what to do, and everything is changing so fast I'm not sure what to grab.
  - mapme 6y ago
    The fundamentals don’t change fast and are what everything else is built on, so I would start there. For example, if you don’t have a traditional CS degree, https://teachyourselfcs.com/ https://teachyourselfcs.com/ is a curated and effective set of books. If your trying to understand complex systems, I would read Designing Data Intensive Applications, which is perhaps the best and most useful technical book I have ever read, and covers the most important parts of distributed systems. A lot of what’s in the book are fundamental distributed systems, from the 70-80s?/newer things from early 2000s built by BigTechCo
bluenose69 6y ago
It strikes me as odd that these resources are listed by title, not by author. In my (natural science) field, it's very much the reverse. I wonder whether this is a disciplinary difference, or just a reflection of Gordon's preference.
jcynix 6y ago
Not just CS books, but unglue.it offers various books, e.g. * Paolo Bory: The Internet Myth https://unglue.it/work/442013/ https://unglue.it/work/442013/ * The Digital Public Domain: Foundations for an Open Culture https://unglue.it/work/136338/ https://unglue.it/work/136338/ * Francis daCosta: Rethinking the Internet of Things (APress) https://unglue.it/work/310550/ https://unglue.it/work/310550/ * Shotts: The Linux Command Line (No Starch Press) https://unglue.it/work/136224/ https://unglue.it/work/136224/ * Fogel: Producing Open Source Software UT: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project https://unglue.it/work/135870/ https://unglue.it/work/135870/ * Ryder: Unix as IDE https://unglue.it/work/194054/ https://unglue.it/work/194054/ More at e.g. * https://unglue.it/free/kw.Computers%20/%20Programming/ https://unglue.it/free/kw.Computers%20/%20Programming/
WalterBright 6y ago
"Programming in D - Tutorial and Reference" Ali Çehreli http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/index.html http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/index.html
blackrock 6y ago
How do you read your ebooks? Anyone have any success using the reMarkable 2 for it?
- scns 6y ago
  Check out https://getpolarized.io https://getpolarized.io if you are fine with electron a working with a mouse. Disclaimer: not affiliated
pushpa_dc 6y ago
thank you
pyfan878 6y ago
algorithms illuminated isn't freely available. The links forward to amazon.
boxmonster 6y ago
I suggest adding Bob Nystrom's "Crafting Interpreters" http://craftinginterpreters.com/ http://craftinginterpreters.com/
asicsp 6y ago
All my ebooks are free to read online: https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course#ebooks https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course#ebooks And here's a huge list of freely available programming books: https://ebookfoundation.github.io/free-programming-books/books/free-programming-books.html https://ebookfoundation.github.io/free-programming-books/boo...
- Ryoung27 6y ago
  Thank you, the scripting course looks awesome.
brogrammer2018 6y ago
The best list: https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/blob/master/books/free-programming-books.md https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/bl...
teleforce 6y ago
Nice list thanks. Perhaps you can add "High Performance Browser Networking" in your networking book section: https://hpbn.co/ https://hpbn.co/
adilsardar 6y ago
Thank you for sharing this kind of information. It really helps other people :)
subset 6y ago
I also really enjoyed MIT's "Mathematics for Computer Science" by Lehman, Leighton & Meyer (http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.042/spring18/mcs.pdf http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.042/spring18/mcs.pdf)
mathieubordere 6y ago
"The Little Book of Semaphores" also belongs here. https://greenteapress.com/wp/semaphores/ https://greenteapress.com/wp/semaphores/
deflox 6y ago
"Eloquent Javascript" might also be a candidate for this list but it is only available to read online: https://eloquentjavascript.net https://eloquentjavascript.net

574 points by MrXOR 6y ago

This is a great post, so many good resources and information!!!

Really helped me out when I was getting my CS degree. Some classes I'd use these free copies, but core classes ex. Algorithms I liked having the physical copy of CLRS.

ljhsiung 6y ago

Their link to "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (5th edition)" (https://booksite.elsevier.com/9780123838728/references.php https://booksite.elsevier.com/9780123838728/references.php) is broken. Here's a couple more [1],[2]. I'm also surprised Jeff Erickson's free lecture notes [3] aren't there given 1) its easy to remember domain 2) its incredibly high, practical quality. Practical because I've had interviews that just grab questions from the book, and also because his course is basically just a walk-through of the book. It's also very easy to read, and although I didn't do great in his class, his conceptual lessons still stick with me. [1] http://acs.pub.ro/~cpop/SMPA/Computer%20Architecture%20A%20Quantitative%20Approach%20(5th%20edition).pdf http://acs.pub.ro/~cpop/SMPA/Computer%20Architecture%20A%20Q... [2] https://github.com/Seanforfun/Books/blob/master/Computer/Computer%20Architecture%20-%20A%20Quantitative%20Approach%20(Fifth%20Edition).pdf https://github.com/Seanforfun/Books/blob/master/Computer/Com... [3] http://algorithms.wtf http://algorithms.wtf

james_white 6y ago
Couldn't recommend Jeff Erickson's lecture notes more for algorithms, DP, and the like. I too did rather poorly in the class so you're not alone! In a similar vein, Lawrence Angrave, a systems programming lecturer, has a wonderful crowd-sourced "book" [1] on all things systems programming. It is my go to resource for brushing up on these topics. Lastly, David Forsyth, a statistics/applied ML lecturer has a gold mine of a book for diving into ML and difficult concepts that come with it [2]. [1] https://github.com/angrave/SystemProgramming/wiki https://github.com/angrave/SystemProgramming/wiki [2] http://luthuli.cs.uiuc.edu/~daf/courses/AML-18/learning-book-19-April-18.pdf http://luthuli.cs.uiuc.edu/~daf/courses/AML-18/learning-book...
- awnguyen 6y ago
  Sometimes I’m wondering why U of I doesn’t have a bigger presence in the online learning world, other than net math. The material is great.
  - willhslade 6y ago
    Illinois is going bankrupt to the degree that it’s affecting the U of I. They do, however, have both an iMBA and a masters in CS through coursera.
david38 6y ago
Jeff was one of my favorite teachers. He made algorithms and proofs fun, even if you didn’t get an A.

irateswami 6y ago

I had a lot of qualms with my CS education, the professors in particular, but I have to hand it to them they always either tried to have the book and material online for free, or would use the international edition of whatever textbook we needed. Textbooks, and higher education in general, are a complete ripoff for 90% of people doing it.

ldjb 6y ago
Nothing worse than courses that require a textbook written by the lecturer decades ago and is now out-of-print, with only one copy in the library that all the students have to fight over.
- harry8 6y ago
  Yeah there is. Courses that require you to purchase the lecturer's terrible quality printed and photocopied(!) Unpublished "Lecture notes" At least a garbage textbook damages their reputation in their field.
  - irateswami 6y ago
    I had a garbage math professor in college who did this, total bullshit.

gmfawcett 6y ago

An obligatory mention of the /r/csbooks subreddit, where we share titles like these: https://www.reddit.com/r/csbooks/ https://www.reddit.com/r/csbooks/

mathnmusic 6y ago
Hoping that it's okay to share LearnAwesome's (my open-source project) computer-science topic page here: https://learnawesome.org/topics/2680f6d5-b662-4cc3-99e5-e748e744d875-computer-science https://learnawesome.org/topics/2680f6d5-b662-4cc3-99e5-e748...

pron 6y ago

By no means a textbook, just a barely-edited book-length anthology of primary sources I put together, but let me plug my own: Finite of Sense and Infinite of Thought: A History of Computation, Logic and Algebra https://pron.github.io/computation-logic-algebra https://pron.github.io/computation-logic-algebra

bambataa 6y ago
I enjoyed your introduction to TLA+, so looking forward to this. Thank you.
blewboarwastake 6y ago
The Bibliography is definitively useful but the editing and commentary is really good too. I'll bookmark it and will keep reading later.
epilys 6y ago
Do you have plans on publishing an epub?
- pron 6y ago
  Not currently. Seems like a lot of work, especially with all the margin notes and figures. But if you could suggest tools that might make this easier, I'd give them a look.

blackrock 6y ago

Fascinating list. Thanks.

ipodopt 6y ago

In the same vein: https://github.com/ossu/computer-science https://github.com/ossu/computer-science

ipodopt 6y ago

In the vein's shadow: [audio books] http://audiobookbay.nl/ http://audiobookbay.nl/ [books] http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ [research papers] https://sci-hub.do/ https://sci-hub.do/

boblivion 6y ago

https://toc.cryptobook.us/ https://toc.cryptobook.us/ A comprehensive introduction to provable cryptography that is comparatively modern.

ljhsiung 6y ago
That exact link is already included.

amir734jj 6y ago

Kind of unrelated, I am wondering does anyone know a good CS lecture note websites? There was a one I saw here few months ago but I forgot the URL.

treeman79 6y ago
https://youtu.be/ywWBy6J5gz8 https://youtu.be/ywWBy6J5gz8 Learn Quicksort via tap dancing.

rckoepke 6y ago

https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/index https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/index has 100% free interactive versions of high quality textbooks. They use a JavaScript implementation of Python which runs in the browser (Skulpt) to provide a REPL. Example Textbooks: Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures using Python (3rd edition)

vram22 6y ago
I had blogged about them, but for a different reason, also interactive - online turtle graphics: Online turtle graphics in Python from Runestone Interactive: https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2013/02/online-turtle-graphics-in-python-from.html?m=0 https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2013/02/online-turtle-graphics-i... Had also mentioned that anyone can host a course there for free.

jagger27 6y ago

https://opendatastructures.org/ https://opendatastructures.org/ is quite good.

kyawzazaw 6y ago
I wish this has syntax highlighting

aronpye 6y ago

I wish these lists were better curated rather than just a dump of links with no commentary.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ipodopt 6y ago
https://github.com/ossu/computer-science https://github.com/ossu/computer-science
- aronpye 6y ago
  Still doesn’t really explain the contents of any of the linked courses or why you need to take them. The only decent teach yourself computer science program I have come across is https://teachyourselfcs.com/ https://teachyourselfcs.com/
  - ipodopt 6y ago
    It gives you a complete minimally ordered set to high quality a CS education. > Still doesn’t really explain the contents of any of the linked courses or why you need to take them That is the job of the course lecturer or author who know best. It is always done in the first lecture of any course and is provided in written form in the syllabus. All you need to do click on the links....

riknos314 6y ago

Runestone academy has a good collection of interactive online textbooks https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/index https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/index Disclaimer: I helped build this platform as a student

isaacdl 6y ago
Hey, I worked on Runestone as a student too, with Brad! Small world :).

st1x7 6y ago

Thanks for sharing, this is great. It's also a bit intimidating and overhwelming. There is so much to learn and there is also a danger of just getting through textbooks that cover the same material that you've read before or covering stuff on a surface level without getting any practice with what you've learned. As a data scientist, it feels like anything from mathematics, computer science, statistics, large-scale systems, software engineering in general is within my domain and there is a real danger of spreading oneself a bit too thin and not getting that good at anything.

artificialLimbs 6y ago
Exactly what I'm going through as a junior programmer. I have no idea what to do, and everything is changing so fast I'm not sure what to grab.
- mapme 6y ago
  The fundamentals don’t change fast and are what everything else is built on, so I would start there. For example, if you don’t have a traditional CS degree, https://teachyourselfcs.com/ https://teachyourselfcs.com/ is a curated and effective set of books. If your trying to understand complex systems, I would read Designing Data Intensive Applications, which is perhaps the best and most useful technical book I have ever read, and covers the most important parts of distributed systems. A lot of what’s in the book are fundamental distributed systems, from the 70-80s?/newer things from early 2000s built by BigTechCo

bluenose69 6y ago

It strikes me as odd that these resources are listed by title, not by author. In my (natural science) field, it's very much the reverse. I wonder whether this is a disciplinary difference, or just a reflection of Gordon's preference.

jcynix 6y ago

Not just CS books, but unglue.it offers various books, e.g. * Paolo Bory: The Internet Myth https://unglue.it/work/442013/ https://unglue.it/work/442013/ * The Digital Public Domain: Foundations for an Open Culture https://unglue.it/work/136338/ https://unglue.it/work/136338/ * Francis daCosta: Rethinking the Internet of Things (APress) https://unglue.it/work/310550/ https://unglue.it/work/310550/ * Shotts: The Linux Command Line (No Starch Press) https://unglue.it/work/136224/ https://unglue.it/work/136224/ * Fogel: Producing Open Source Software UT: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project https://unglue.it/work/135870/ https://unglue.it/work/135870/ * Ryder: Unix as IDE https://unglue.it/work/194054/ https://unglue.it/work/194054/ More at e.g. * https://unglue.it/free/kw.Computers%20/%20Programming/ https://unglue.it/free/kw.Computers%20/%20Programming/

WalterBright 6y ago

"Programming in D - Tutorial and Reference" Ali Çehreli http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/index.html http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/index.html

blackrock 6y ago

How do you read your ebooks? Anyone have any success using the reMarkable 2 for it?

scns 6y ago
Check out https://getpolarized.io https://getpolarized.io if you are fine with electron a working with a mouse. Disclaimer: not affiliated

pushpa_dc 6y ago

thank you

pyfan878 6y ago

algorithms illuminated isn't freely available. The links forward to amazon.

boxmonster 6y ago

I suggest adding Bob Nystrom's "Crafting Interpreters" http://craftinginterpreters.com/ http://craftinginterpreters.com/

asicsp 6y ago

All my ebooks are free to read online: https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course#ebooks https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course#ebooks And here's a huge list of freely available programming books: https://ebookfoundation.github.io/free-programming-books/books/free-programming-books.html https://ebookfoundation.github.io/free-programming-books/boo...

Ryoung27 6y ago
Thank you, the scripting course looks awesome.

brogrammer2018 6y ago

The best list: https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/blob/master/books/free-programming-books.md https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/bl...

teleforce 6y ago

Nice list thanks. Perhaps you can add "High Performance Browser Networking" in your networking book section: https://hpbn.co/ https://hpbn.co/

adilsardar 6y ago

Thank you for sharing this kind of information. It really helps other people :)

subset 6y ago

I also really enjoyed MIT's "Mathematics for Computer Science" by Lehman, Leighton & Meyer (http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.042/spring18/mcs.pdf http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.042/spring18/mcs.pdf)

mathieubordere 6y ago

"The Little Book of Semaphores" also belongs here. https://greenteapress.com/wp/semaphores/ https://greenteapress.com/wp/semaphores/

deflox 6y ago

"Eloquent Javascript" might also be a candidate for this list but it is only available to read online: https://eloquentjavascript.net https://eloquentjavascript.net