9 ms·
A list of free programming books
- th3byrdm4n 13y agoYes, this is basically a carbon copy of other lists, but I found at least one resource that was new to me - http://refcardz.dzone.com/ http://refcardz.dzone.com/ So cool. Thanks :D
- blueblob 13y agoI like how this is nearly exactly the text from the stack overflow question... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-ava...
- vhf 13y agoREADME.md says : " This list initially was a clone of stackoverflow - List of freely available programming books by George Stocker. Now updated, with dead links gone (hopefully) and new content. " I've had this SO list in my bookmarks for long enough, and there were more and more dead links in it. I felt the need to move it to github in order to keep it up-to-date and to augment it. I apologize if the intention or original source were not made clear.
- raganwald 13y agoThis is the right thing to do. SO has a very specific vision, that of finding and displaying the definitive answer to an objective question. A resource like this doesn't fit their model, even if you strain it by trying to invent a question that appears to fit their format. "This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed."
- guiambros 13y agoThis is thing I hate about SO. Its view of what is on-topic is completely arbitrary and narrow-minded. I understand that Jeff's initial vision was to create a site for objective questions & answers, but over time SO mods have taken it to the extreme. The list of best programming books may not be totally objective, but the wisdom of the crowds just should be enough to filter out what's good from what's bad. When mods lock the allegedly non-objective questions, they force content to become stale and rot - but still showing up at the top of search engines.
- blueblob 13y agoSorry, I didn't look at the url and thought this was the README.md :-( I have given you an upvote
- denzil_correa 13y agoHere's a nice collection about the same on Stack Overflow as well - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-ava...
- raganwald 13y agoI discovered that when I Read The Fine Article directly. I also discovered that the original list os frozen and out-of-date. It includes at least one book that is no longer freely available, and omits my own JavaScript Allongé, which was made free this month.
- vhf 13y agoAnd which was among the first additions to this list, because it truly is an awesome read !
- buckbova 13y agoI just started on "JavaScript Allongé" and am really enjoying your prose and working through the examples. Good job! I had to look up what _allongé_ meant as I've never heard it ordered. It sounds like the perfect drink. "coffee beverage made by using an espresso machine to make an espresso (single or double dose or shot) with much more water (generally twice as much), resulting in a stretched espresso" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungo
- aram 13y agoIt's interesting to see how git/Github as a platform replaces Wikipedia in certain cases for collecting information and enabling people to contribute.
- ohblahitsme 13y agoYeah, especially with Markdown integration, which makes incredibly easy for someone to host their own "information site" and make it look nice and modern. I wonder if Wikipedia would ever change their revision system in favor of git.
- webjprgm 13y agoSomeone would have to own each Wikipedia page to approve pull requests. As it is now, anyone can do the edits directly even if there's not a person dedicated to curating a particular page.
- guynamedloren 13y agoYep. There are huge advantages to a GitHub model over Wikipedia for collecting information. Shameless plug, but highly relevant: I'm trying to make 'git as a platform' more accessible for non-programmers with a project I'm working on - http://www.penflip.com http://www.penflip.com. Wrote about it in detail here: http://madebyloren.com/github-for-writers http://madebyloren.com/github-for-writers Glad to discuss it further if anybody's interested.
- ohblahitsme 13y agoSimilar list with more differences than the Stack Overflow one: http://programming-motherfucker.com/become.html http://programming-motherfucker.com/become.html
- buckbova 13y agoRed-gate has some decent and current t-sql programming books and mssql dev books available for free. http://www.red-gate.com/community/books/ http://www.red-gate.com/community/books/
- blinkingled 13y agoThis one about building Android apps using HTML/JS/CSS isn't free anymore - http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9781449383268/ http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9781449383268/ - itwas in Open Feedback Publishing System some time ago. Now you'd need to buy it. (BTW, it has 2.5 stars on Oreilly site.)
- Splendor 13y agoThat's already been identified as an issue in the github repo.
- frncscgmz 13y agoIt seams the Learning Android book was removed by O'Reilly.
- JustinBlaird 13y agohttp://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-lisp-intro/ http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-lisp-intro/ 404
- Jtsummers 13y agohttp://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/eintr.html http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/eintr.html This is where the resources has moved to.
- staunch 13y agomjd's Higher Order Perl should be on most people's must-read list: http://hop.perl.plover.com/book/ http://hop.perl.plover.com/book/
- kamaal 13y agoThis is one book, you absolutely must read. Even if you don't program in Perl. This is basically the equivalent of SICP for the scripting world.
- thewarrior 13y agoI checked it out after you recommended it in another thread. Its great. Any other recommendations ?
- aswanson 13y agoThanks. I hate looking at perl syntax but will investigate based on this comment.
- auvrw 13y agoit's a really good book, no doubt, but comparing it to sicp is a bit much. if you don't program in perl already, it might be more beneficial to just learn haskell, and writing some functional perl could be a first step toward that goal, particularly if you're coming from a background in C. i read some of if while learning perl because i was already somewhat familiar with functional programming.
- nieve 13y agoHigher Order Perl is the book that actually got me excited about Perl again after using it for ten years and then not needing to touch it for five. As usual MJD is clear, absorbing, and has great taste in what to write about. So many techniques are a great fit for Perl/Ruby/Python and yet are completely absent from books on those languages.
- brothmc 13y agohttp://addyosmani.github.io/backbone-fundamentals/ http://addyosmani.github.io/backbone-fundamentals/
- LoneWolf 13y agoNow all I need is an automated way to download them all
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bbx 13y agoI used to have the same reaction when stumbling upon lists like this. But it has never proved to be a great idea. You get easily overwhelmed by the amount and variety of content available. Before even starting reading one of these books, you need to filter them by topic, by scope, by usefulness, and by quality. You inevitably end up starting none of them. I prefer focusing on one subject or programming language, search the internet for feedbacks and reviews, select the one book (free or not) that fits my needs and read that one. I'm consequently more informed about what my further needs are: do I want to learn more about this programming language? Or about a different but complementary one? Or do I need to reach for a more language-agnostic topic? It's the usual "quality over quantity" issue, that prevents yourself from taking no decision at all when facing too many options.
- jrs99 13y agoi had that same experience. most books are good but are usually replaceable. some books i can't understand how good they are because they're beyond my level. And a few are just right, and also take you to that "a-ha moment." you need to do your research and select that one right book and work through it. If in the middle of a book you think you're not making good progress, you should just drop it and find another one.
- puzanop 13y agowish there was a list of !!!good!!! programming book, not even free. Like, book that would make you a better dev.
- pekk 13y agoCan you point out at least one programming book which makes you a worse developer? Doesn't it depend on what specifically you are trying to learn?
- malexw 13y agoI think the point is that there are only so many hours in a human lifespan. While I'd love to read everything that the world has to say on the subject, I'd like to focus on books that will be the most enlightening (or entertaining).
- dreen 13y agoSimilar lists/sites: http://www.coderheya.com http://www.coderheya.com http://hackershelf.com http://hackershelf.com http://pineapple.io http://pineapple.io
- cjstewart88 13y agoHah! Thanks for the link, didn't think anyone remembered it. Coder Heya was fun to build, I wish a community would have built around it though.
- Deelux 13y agoNice, thnk!
- justin66 13y agoIt seems worth mentioning specific books by name, since lists of lists don't help people differentiate the great from the good. Algorithms by S. Dasgupta, C.H. Papadimitriou, and U.V. Vazirani looks really promising as an introductory algorithms textbook. I wonder if anyone has experience using it in class? http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html I wonder a little about that text's status as a freely available draft and whether it would be kosher to distribute the pdf if that site disappears.
- iyulaev 13y agoAlgorithms by S. Dasgupta, C.H. Papadimitriou, and U.V. Vazirani looks really promising as an introductory algorithms textbook. I wonder if anyone has experience using it in class? We used this in our upper-division intro to algorithms course. Solid book, goes over important algorithms while remaining short and concise, A+ would read again.
- tikhonj 13y agoIt's basically just the lecture notes for their class bundled up into a book. I took the class it was based off, and, well, it was okay but not great. It lacks any sort of underlying narrative or structure--I think this is common with algorithms texts in general. Probably why I didn't like the course much. It feels like a bunch of disjoint topics held together very loosely by some techniques that get repeated a bit. I compare it very unfavorably to Sispser's Introduction to the Theory of Computation which, I felt, was much more coherent as a book. It's not a fair comparison at all because they're about different (although related) subjects, but I think it neatly illustrates my point. Also, I don't believe Sipser's book is free, so it's not entirely relevant in that sense either. I just brought it up because I think it's the best example of the underlying narrative and structure I was talking about.
- LeafStorm 13y agoTwo and a half years into my bachelor's, Sipser's Introduction to the Theory of Computation is the only computer science textbook I've had so far that I'd say I really found useful for anything beyond the homework problems, besides K.N. King's C Programming: A Modern Approach. (To keep this on topic, my assembly instructor -- the legendary [to NC State students] Dana Lasher -- posts his course pack online. [1] It's a comprehensive introduction to computer architecture topics and original 8086 assembly programming.) [1] http://courses.ncsu.edu/csc236/lec/001/cops.htm http://courses.ncsu.edu/csc236/lec/001/cops.htm
- rmrfrmrf 13y agoThank you!
- granttimmerman 13y agoThe biggest question now is, where do we start?
- simgidacav 13y agoFrom a topic you deem interesting of course. But be aware of the fact a book does not give the experience you gain by working hands-on to something.
- AsymetricCom 13y agoAren't they all free?
- mck- 13y agoReminds me of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-ava...
- john_hamsters 13y agohttp://programming-motherfucker.com/become.html http://programming-motherfucker.com/become.html Another great list of books for programming languages/tools/frameworks/gen dev
- simgidacav 13y agoSemi-OT: For e-book reader owners: you can use pandoc to convert from HTML to ePub.
- fest 13y agoFull-OT: pandoc requires ghc, which takes about 1GiB of disk space, which I found very odd, given that gcc is about 75 MiB.
- simgidacav 13y agoYeah, but dude, it's fukken haskell :D. Good comment anyway, I didn't realize the drawback...
- Deelux 13y agoGreat list. Thanks a lot! I couldn't find this url in this post and it made me pretty happy when I found it. A website full of IT book which can be downloaded for free. http://www.it-ebooks.info/ http://www.it-ebooks.info/