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Speaking as an actually credentialed computer scientist, this list is ridiculous. First and for all, only one of these books is actually about theoretical comp
by phillmv 15y ago
Speaking as an actually credentialed computer scientist, this list is ridiculous.
First and for all, only one of these books is actually about theoretical computer science, and even then.
Secondly, (feel free to disagree on this one) K&R is recommended more as a prestige book. So much of C is in the toolkit and libraries that I think it's a little silly to be recommending a 30 year old intro that is actually kind of hard to read.
Thirdly, this question comes up all the time. Here's an actually serious version of this question: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/3253/what-books-should-everyone-read http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/3253/what-books-...
If you only care about actually practical issues to your life as a programmer, give this list a shot http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3320813 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3320813
Addendum: Although I'm credentialed as a CompSci, I really work as an engineer. The difference? Scientists read papers (Avi Bryant) http://vimeo.com/4763707 http://vimeo.com/4763707 and think about the nature of our work (Greg Wilson) http://vimeo.com/9270320 http://vimeo.com/9270320
- ericmoritz 15y agoI apologize for any offense that I may have given by using the phase "self-taught computer scientist". This article is my personal recommendation of books that I often recommend to junior developers that are smart but didn't complete a degree and often find their knowledge of basic computer science lacking.
- phillmv 15y agoTo be fair, I didn't take offense to "self-taught computer scientist". I took offense to "every self-taught computer scientist". I'll be the first to admit that university is bullshit and mostly acts as a social signifier. Like I mentioned above, I'm credentialed, and I'll put that on my business cards but between you and me and the internet at large I mostly work as a software engineer. There are even many problems with talking about "computer science" because for the most part it's treated like a branch of mathematics and its academic circle really hates dabbling in messy empirical data. Yet, there's a degree of rigour in it. There's an actual underpinning behind a lot of this stuff. So! Can you be a self taught computer scientist? Certainly! K&R and The Little Schemer just have almost nothing to do with it - even if they might make you into better programmers :).
- scott_s 15y agoThere are even many problems with talking about "computer science" because for the most part it's treated like a branch of mathematics and its academic circle really hates dabbling in messy empirical data. This gets repeated again and again on HN, but it's not true. I am a CS researcher, and I always have messy empirical data. Systems research almost always has tons of experimental results. A large chunk of our papers are dedicated to the experimental design and results. I have made this point many times before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=968013 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=968013 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=690798 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=690798 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1131606 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1131606 One of these days I'm going to actually set up a blog, write this point up as an essay, and be able to point to it. My own personal definition of computer science: everything concerned with computation, both in the abstract and in the implementation.
- phillmv 15y agoPlease do! And link to the rest of your research :)! I'm just talking from my own (very) limited personal experience, though, and the Greg Wilson video I linked to (albeit it's been two years since I last watched it).
- scott_s 15y agoYou can find everything that I have currently published in a peer-reviewed place on my (old) webpage in my profile. I've done lots since graduating (lots), but we've hit a bunch of paper rejections (aarrrrggg), so they're not published yet. I was, however, involved in a paper that we've submitted to a journal, so it has not gone through peer-review yet, but we made a tech report so that others could cite it: http://researcher.ibm.com/files/us-hirzel/tr11-rc25215-opt-catalog.pdf http://researcher.ibm.com/files/us-hirzel/tr11-rc25215-opt-c...
- gruseom 15y agoThat looks interesting! I saved it for later.
- tptacek 15y agoAs a self-taught C software developer, I came here to say the same thing Phillip said. To it, I would also add that C isn't the "latin" of computer science (if any language is going to prove to be that, it's Lisp, but it's too early to say, other than to say that isn't going to be C). I'd also suggest that the best book to follow up K&R is Hansen's _C Interfaces and Implementations_. If I wanted to teach someone to be a computer scientist, I'd look for a book that would help them read papers. I'd also point them towards compiler theory, not so much because it's fundamental computer science (it's a vital applied discipline), but because it exposes you to more real computer science than most other domains.
- ericmoritz 15y agoDo you have a book recommendation to help someone read papers. I spent an couple evenings going over MIT course notes on discrete mathematics to attempt to read a paper on Conflict-free Replicated Data Types <http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/55/55/88/PDF/techreport.pdf> http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/55/55/88/PDF/techrep...; What I would give for a book at that time that would help me translate the following: merge (X, Y ) : payload Z let ∀i ∈ [0, n − 1] : Z.P[i] = max(X.P[i], Y.P[i]) Into def merge(X, Y): Z = ... new object ... for i in range(len(X.P) - 1): Z.P[i] = max(X.P[i], Y.P[i]) return Z I eventually figured it out but it was a bit rough trying to figure out what all the symbols meant.
- phillmv 15y agoWell… it depends on the paper! Some stuff might need more than a single course of background to fully understand. For more rudimentary papers, any undergrad course on discrete mathematics should get you started. I personally was forced to read http://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics-Applications-Susanna-Epp/dp/0534359450 http://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics-Applications-Susa... - and it's pretty decent.
- ericmoritz 15y agoThanks for the recommendation. That was one of the text books that I looked at but the sticker shock steered me towards free MIT course notes.
- user24 15y ago> books that I often recommend to junior developers that are smart but didn't complete a degree and often find their knowledge of basic computer science lacking. I think you may be confusing "Computer Science" with "Software Engineering".
- veyron 15y agoWhat is a "Credentialed Computer Scientist"? Do you mean a college degree in CS/EE? I'd imagine a whole slew of people here on HN are Credentialed in that sense.
- tptacek 15y agoMy read: he just means it in the sense that I mean "professional" when I say I'm a professional application security person, except that it's weird to say you're a "professional computer science" when your day job doesn't involve writing papers.
- phillmv 15y agoThat's pretty much it. I got a nice piece of paper, but it's not like my day to day job involves much of what I learned during school.
- blario 15y agoI take it to mean, Ph.D; not from experience, but that's the only meaning that makes sense in the context.