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One of the first books I encountered as I set out on a serious study of computer science was The Hacker's Dictionary. There are surely shortcomings and faults,
by tjr 13y ago
One of the first books I encountered as I set out on a serious study of computer science was The Hacker's Dictionary. There are surely shortcomings and faults, and it was kind of out of date even when I read it (even more now), but it was just so much fun! It expressed a certain silliness and hackish sense of humor that I strongly resonated with, and reading the book motivated me to learn things like Lisp, Emacs, and TeX, and to read (parts of) Knuth, and to volunteer for GNU. That book inspired me to actually learn and do stuff in programming way more than any "serious" book on programming.
- salgernon 13y agoI first learned "programming" from my brothers copy of "a fortan coloring book". The early 80s were a wonderful time for accessible computer literature. I suppose _why's poignant guide to ruby is probably the closest I've seen since.