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Ask HN: What are your favorite programming books?
19 points by oscardelben on July 8, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 9 comments
I'm sure this question as already been asked, but I couldn't find it, so here I'm asking: What are your favorite programming books?


Essentials of Programming Languages.

Engineering a Compiler.

Managing Gigabytes.

Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment

Unix Network Programming

On Lisp

Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation

Concepts, Techniques and Models of Computer Programming

Design Concepts in Programming Languages

Lambda-Calculus and Combinators (the new Hindley/Seldin book, just got it 2 weeks ago)

Optimizing Compilers for Modern Architectures

Abstract Computing Machines: A Lambda-Calculus Perspective


I'm away from my books right now, but here are the ones that come to mind:

Norvig, Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming (I agree with plinkplonk and am quoted on Norvig's web site saying as much; a good book about all of {AI, Lisp, programming}).

Hunt and Thomas, The Pragmatic Programmer (no big surprises but lots of little insights and very little I disagree with; nicely written).

Bentley, Programming Pearls (absolutely superb for the sort of low-level algorithm-heavy stuff that, er, hardly anyone does any more).

Cormen/Leiserson/Rivest/Stein, Introduction to algorithms (best single-volume algorithms text I've seen, but not for the faint-hearted; might be well supplemented with Skiena's The algorithm design manual, a very different sort of book).


Peter Norvig's Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming. The most awesome programming book ever (imho).

To quote Darius Bacon [1]

"It's not just that Norvig is smart; he's specifically skilled at writing really good code, apparently because that's something he cared about and worked on. ..

Norvig's book _Paradigms of AI Programming_ has 900+ pages presenting code as instructive as that Sudoku solver; I've never seen a better collection. http://norvig.com/paip.html "

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=863660


Higher Order Perl by Mark Jason Dominus.

Now available freely online: http://hop.perl.plover.com/book/


Not straight programming, more about software engineering

The Mythical Man Month http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month


Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby

Freely available: http://www.ember.co.nz/resources/whys-poignant-guide-to-ruby...


I liked Programming Language Pragmatics, as it touches a lot of areas without going too deep in any.


Code Complete

Programming Pearls

The C Programming Language

Effective Java


+1 for Effective Java. It is my fav book for a particular language.




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