HN Explorer

Ask HN: Top inspiring books on crucial CS ideas?

40 points by aristofun ↗ HN
I'm not looking for textbooks or best education materials per se, but rather for thought provoking and inspiring reading on computer science topics.

What books you find the most brilliant, inspiring and explaining the core CS ideas, data structures, algorithms?

For any level of readers, just your personal best two.

For example, I find this book amazing for beginners: https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Software/dp/0735611319

And this one of the same author for more prepared reader: https://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Turing-Through-Historic-Computability/dp/0470229055/

28 comments

[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 67.5 ms ] thread
Parker_Powell
No matter how long you've been a programmer, you're always looking for new ways to hone your craft and learn new techniques. One of the best ways to do that is by reading books on programming—as in, books that are actually about programming. Here's our list of 10 of the best.

1. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

2. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

3. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

4. The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

5. Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

6. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering

7. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

8. Introduction to Algorithms (The MIT Press)

9. Programming Pearls (2nd Edition)

10. The Art of Computer Programming

quirino
No offense meant to parent commenter if I'm wrong, but looking at their comment history, does anyone else suspect this is a GPT-3 bot? I've been playing a lot in the GPT Playground this last week and this is very similar to what I get there.
ivanmaeder
The bot's recommendations are good, although maybe not inspiring.

"Programming Pearls" might be an exception—there are some great real-life stories and problems to think through in that.

Maybe also "The Art of Computer Programming" but I can't speak from experience (I'm not ready to tackle that one yet).

yesenadam
Gee, I've read 6 or 7 and found all of them extremely inspiring. (I've not read Code or CLRS Algorithms, and only parts of SICP and TAoCP) Well ok, 'inspiring' maybe is not exactly the word for Man-Month, but it is fascinating. Looks like the list of 10 most-recommended programming books, and things don't get on that list for no reason!
aristofun
agree, the comment feels off the point, while not being off topic
Jtsummers
It reads like a copy/paste from a listicle. However Google (no big surprise these days) failed to turn up results for me with the exact phrasing.
Phithagoras
The phrase

> here's our list of 10 of the best.

seems particularly listicle-y, especially with the full stop rather than a colon or nothing

AnimalMuppet
To me, the thing that jumps out is the "our". That's not the normal way an HN comment would be written. If it's not a bot, it's someone speaking for a group - a publication or a company. (Of course, a GPT3 bot could have lots of that kind of writing in its training corpus.)
want2takearide
It does feel like a GPT-3 bot. I tried testing the GPT3-Davinci model with similar prompts and I get 3 to 5 of the same 10 recommendations.
yesenadam
> looking at their comment history, does anyone else suspect this is a GPT-3 bot

Yes, I've never before on HN thought a commenter was non-human, but most of their comments begin with similar rehashing the topic in a very weird way, like they can't stop writing ad copy. Like they were given the topic and are responding in magazine article or super-commercial-blog style - they don't have the flavour of a person talking a person.

I don't think that should be allowed on HN.

rg111
- The Little Schemer

- The Algorithm Design Manual

- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

- Elements of Computing Systems (nand2tetris book)

ivanmaeder
Great question, I will come back to see what ideas people have. Thanks for the Turing book suggestion too.

I have read lots of non-fiction books about programmers and engineers that have been very inspiring, they're just not technical: "Masters of Doom", "Blood, Sweat, and Pixels", "Coders at Work", "The Idea Factory", "The Soul of a New Machine", "Dealers of Lightning"...

is_true
I read Masters of Doom and I really like it, I don't know why but after a couple of pages I wanna rush to the computer and write some code.

Sometimes Silicon Valley (tv) generates the same reaction on me.

markus_zhang
I'm on the same boat. Although I probably won't write games professionally, considering the golden time of game development was long gone, Romero and Carmack's early stories inspire me a lot.

I especially love the early story of ID, before Romero left. That was probably one if the greatest teams a technical person can be.

is_true
There are plenty of "cool" things to do today, and every few months as technology evolves a new number of "cool" things become doable. The golden age of technology is gonna be always one step ahead
richardthornton
Great question, I'm definitely going to check out some of the other books here.

For me: 1. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. It's a very challenging book (currently 2 years into reading it with a couple of friends), but really helps demystify the different layers of the stack. 2. Coders at Work. Really interesting to hear how they think about programming (and their differing opinions from each other). I found the audiobook really good

jonjacky
Algorithmics by David Harel. Discussion from a few months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29501589

rramadass
Seconded!

Harel's Algorithmics is a must read. The coverage is really broad and comprehensive. For some reason, this book is not that well-known and hence deserves all the publicity/recommendation it can get.

nextos
You will get lots of PLT recommendations, so I will get a bit more theoretical but still close to applications.

For me CS is all about logic and types in the same way classical math is mostly about algebra and calculus.

A great text for logic is Huth & Ryan: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AKE1QXQ

A great text for type theory is TAPL: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08H18R67V

A superb combination of both is Concrete Semantics: http://concrete-semantics.org/concrete-semantics.pdf

Knowing the material in these books is sufficient to land a high end verification job.

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oumua_don17
The Art of metaobject protocol

In his 1997 talk at OOPSLA, Alan Kay called it "the best book anybody's written in ten years", and contended that it contained "some of the most profound insights, and the most practical insights about OOP", but was dismayed that it was written in a highly Lisp-centric and CLOS-specific fashion, calling it "a hard book for most people to read; if you don't know the Lisp culture, it's very hard to read" [2]

[1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/art-metaobject-protocol

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY

pigiou
One book I really enjoyed is "But How Do It Know?".

It's a fun read and it explains the core concepts of how a computer works really well.

rramadass
* Understanding Computation: From Simple Machines to Impossible Programs by Tom Stuart.

* Out of their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists by Dennis Shasha et al.

* Ideas That Created the Future: Classic Papers of Computer Science edited by Harry Lewis - Came across this book in another HN thread but i don't have it yet.

mooreds
If you are looking for concepts and not actual code or implementations, can't recommend "Algorithms to Live By" (https://algorithmstoliveby.com/) enough. It walks through 10ish algorithms and how they can be applied to real life.
phendrenad2
Read a book on discrete mathematics or information theory. Yes both of these are maths categories. Yes I'm certain.
qubex
I cannot recommend William Gary Flake’s The Computational Beauty of Nature (1998) enough.