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so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

s/mostly/almost/

O'Reilly still puts out many great, serious books with good formatting and decent binding + paper + printing.

Many of the new titles on machine learning, for instance.

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

Here's another similar to Flake's, but using JS and with nice binding:

The Nature of Code: Simulating Natural Systems with JavaScript

by Daniel Shiffman

https://natureofcode.com/

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20389247W/The_Nature_of_Code

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

I've mostly stopped recommending O'Reilly books at my public library because in many cases the printing has been so bad, it's embarrassing. Just-in-time manufacturing, I guess.

It's not like the old days when books were heirlooms with attentive layouts, quality paper and ink, and solid bindings. Addison-Wesley's offerings come to mind, even softcover books from Prentice-Hall. And especially the ancient Computer Science Series from McGraw-Hill College.

Manning and No Starch do a better job these days.

Here's a new hardcover many here could appreciate:

Heavy Wizardry 101: Shellcodes, Backdoors, Droppers, and Worms

by David Martínez Oliveira, aka Pico

https://nostarch.com/heavy-wizardry-101

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

I'm surprised nobody ever mentions pg's CL book. It has his characteristic easy reading style, is a nice compact size, and used copies are easy to come by.

ANSI Common Lisp by Paul Graham

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL7944696W/ANSI_Common_Lisp

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

Thanks. I'll seek these out next time I get to a university library. I'd like to read more good books on multiprocessing.

Two other OS texts in my collection that I really enjoyed were:

UNIX Internals: The New Frontiers

by Uresh Vahalia

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2938389W/Unix_Internals

and,

The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System

by McKusick, Bostic, Karels, and Quarterman

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19501888W/The_design_and_imp...

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

Ah. I realize the book I carried everywhere was this one:

Data Structures and Algorithms

by Aho, Hopcroft, and Ullman

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL3491774M/Data_structures_and...

but I own copies of both.

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

It was probably the first book on data structures and algorithms I came to possess (likely from a library book sale as a teen), so I would say I learned a lot from it, but don't remember the particulars. I remember it being clear and to the point, even though I didn't use Pascal, with good diagrams and nice printing. I read it as pseudocode.

It was a very compact hardcover edition that I could carry around easily in my backpack.

And it had a memorable title.

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

Wow. I need Furber's book too.

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

I love these. Thanks!

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

Does this count?

Learning the Vi Editor by Linda Lamb

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL36777015M/Learning_the_Vi_Ed...

btw, vi turned 50 last week:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50403300

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

Now I wonder if the cover of The Little Learner is a reference to The Turing Omnibus..

The New Turing Omnibus: Sixty-Six Excursions in Computer Science

by A.K. Dewdney

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1950479W/The_%28new%29_turin...

so-cal-schemeron 2026 ACM SIGOPS Annual Technical Conference

The 2026 ACM SIGOPS Annual Technical Conference (ATC) brings together leading systems researchers for the presentation of cutting-edge systems research and the opportunity to gain insight into a wealth of must-know topics, including virtualization, system and network management and troubleshooting, cloud and edge computing, security, privacy, and trust, mobile and wireless, and more.

  Where
    Hyatt Hotel, Shatin, Hong Kong

  When
    November 15-18, 2026

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

Not to forget The Little Prover, The Little Typer, and The Little Learner.

One happy Little family.

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21569615W/Little_Prover

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20186830W/The_Little_Typer

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL28874136W/Little_Learner

And Grandpa, The Little LISPer

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2938932W/The_little_LISPer

and cousins, The Little MLer

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2729083W/The_little_MLer

and A Little Java, a Few Patterns

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2729082W/A_little_Java_a_few...

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

I confess this is above my pay grade, but very intersting and I would like to probe the machine with this data.

I enjoy your choice of phrase: 'to elicit' code from Claude. Like wishes from the Djinn. I imagine a guiding light through the Library of Babel ..or a trail of bread crumbs.

Over several months I watched over a friend's shoulder, with heavy lifting from Cluade, as he designed and verified a PCB for an IoT SoC with custom drivers for components, even hacking a video encoder to be a partial GPU such that it can playably run Quake (and more planned). And another friend designing a RISC-V core in an FPGA with aid from AI. I feel like quoting Roy Batty in Bladerunner.

Anyway.. mate?

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

Another book on modern ARM:

Blue Fox: Arm Assembly Internals and Reverse Engineering

by Maria Markstedter

https://www.wiley.com/en-au/shop/general-introductory-comput...

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

I was able to get my local college to buy a copy, but I have yet to read it all the way through.

Another I got them to purchase is

Exercises in Programming Style

by Cristina Videira Lopes

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20754451W/Exercises_in_Progr...

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

^ another book I enjoyed very much. Underrated.

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

I was thinking of See MIPS Run. Always wanted a copy, checked it out once or twice long ago.

Why not go straight to Patterson & Hennessey?

Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2664271W/Computer_architectu...

Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2956523W/Computer_organizati...

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

A dream of mine is to study some Scala at EPFL.

Likewise, (take/TA?) HtDP at UBC.

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

for Haskell there is also,

The Haskell School of Expression: Learning Functional Programming through Multimedia

by Paul Hudak

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8325694W/The_Haskell_School_...

https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/hudak/SOE/

and related,

The Haskell School of Music

https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/hudak/Papers/HSoM.pdf

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

Classic!

The 2nd part reminds me of another in my personal library:

Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs

by Wirth

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL5191055M/Algorithms_data_str...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithms_%2B_Data_Structures...

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

AKA K&R for Brian Kernighan & dmr.

Another regret was not getting my copy signed at a certain USENIX ATC.

..tho, actually Dennis was there with Ken and Rob, not Brian.

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

Also, this guy:

https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/1amon8p/d...

so-cal-schemeron The Computational Beauty of Nature

I remember code in the physical book being in scheme..

..perhaps just this section:

  Computation
  -----------

   STUTTER - a simple lisp interpreter that only understands car, cdr,
   cons, if, set, equal, quote, and lambda, but is still Turing-complete.
   Uses stop-and-copy garbage collection and has an adjustable heap size.
   Examples that implement integer and floating-point arithmetic are
   provided.  There is even an example STUTTER function to compute the
   square root of a floating-point argument with nothing but the primitives
   listed above.

so-cal-schemeron The Computational Beauty of Nature

  Gary William Flake · MIT Press, 1998
  The Computational Beauty of Nature
  Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation.

In this book, Gary William Flake develops in depth the simple idea that recurrent rules can produce rich and complicated behaviors. Distinguishing “agents” (e.g., molecules, cells, animals, and species) from their interactions (e.g., chemical reactions, immune system responses, sexual reproduction, and evolution), Flake argues that it is the computational properties of interactions that account for much of what we think of as “beautiful” and “interesting.” From this basic thesis, Flake explores what he considers to be today's four most interesting computational topics: fractals, chaos, complex systems, and adaptation.

Each of the book's parts can be read independently, enabling even the casual reader to understand and work with the basic equations and programs. Yet the parts are bound together by the theme of the computer as a laboratory and a metaphor for understanding the universe. The inspired reader will experiment further with the ideas presented to create fractal landscapes, chaotic systems, artificial life forms, genetic algorithms, and artificial neural networks.

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

Has anyone read or can comment on this one?:

Functional Design and Architecture: Examples in Haskell

by Alexander Granin

https://www.manning.com/books/functional-design-and-architec...

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

with a 2nd edition released this year:

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/designing-data-intensiv...

and another memorable book with Martin Kleppmann:

Secret Colors: A Gentle Introduction to Cryptography

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL29241370W/Secret_Colors

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

I still think the return-on-time from a good book is greater than a lecture or video or discussion. There is just so much refinement and information density, plus the ability to skip around to find interesting content is hard to match. (there is also something to be said for reinforcement of memory via spatial awareness while reading a physical book that is lost on a screen).

An interactive portal to a digital book could rival or surpass the experience, but I haven't encountered that yet.

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

Maybe not so hard to find! (worth a look and check out the music video):

http://landoflisp.com/

comment from pg: "Turns out the border between genius and insanity is a pretty cheery place"

so-cal-schemeron Five memorable books about programming (2008)

This looks like a fun book (that my library so far won't order..):

Classic Game Programming on the NES: Make your own retro video game

by Tony Cruise -- published 2024.

https://www.manning.com/books/classic-game-programming-on-th...

Do you have an amazing idea for a NES game you’ve been itching to turn into reality? Classic Game Programming on the NES will show you how. This all-practical beginner's guide is full of step-by-step guidance on everything from graphics and music, to enemy AI, to the 6502 Assembler language you need to get the most out of the NES.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1633438015