> actually read these books AND found them useful ON THE JOB I did read all three - it took me about three years to get through all three and (at least try to)

> actually read these books AND found them useful ON THE JOB I did read all three - it took me about three years to get through all three and (at least try to) work each exercise. Useful on the job? No, not really, but I can't think of a non-fiction book(s) I've enjoyed reading much more than these. All of the code examples are in assembler, and not just any assembler, his own imaginary assembler (but you can download a compiler and an emulator for it). I'd be hard-pressed to come up with anything that he covers here that's not already part of the standard library of any programming language you could possibly consider using - but it's still great reading, and illuminating in indirect ways.