For me, the blue Smalltalk book by Adele Goldberg was deeply formative. It was computing done right and from first principles.
The other two formative experiences for me were using Cincom’s Mantis on the 3278 and Dataflex 2. Both made it obvious how quickly one could go from screen to persisted data, CRUD, application logic, and reporting with the right level of abstraction. Much later I described Dataflex as “Rails for the VT100”. Sadly, Cincom will not provide a hobby license to run it on an emulated 4381, and won’t even give away free manuals, and the company behind Dataflex (I don’t remember their name right now) seems to not even have any versions from that time. When I read Paul Graham’s Beating the Averages, it all clicked perfectly.
Programmers at work: I bought a used copy of it - probably after reading this the first time it was posted. Great book, if you can find it.
Code, by Charles Petzold should be on any programmer’s list - and the list of anyone with curiosity about how the modern world works. It somehow manages the amazing trick of being readable for the novice, but also containing nuggets of insight for the expert all at the same time. Such a well written book.
> The majority of the book was about detailed optimization for the 8088 and 8086, yet it was published when the 80486 was showing up in high-end desktop PCs.
The book goes all the way up to discussing the 386. It's just that the foundations is rooted in 8086, which is a large chunk of the book.
My favorite books (or the ones I have spend most time with) and that have been most formative for me are:
Mastering Turbo Assembler by Tom Swan
Zen of Graphics Programming by Michael Abrash
The Zen Of Assembly Language by Michael Abrash
Programmer's Guide to the EGA, VGA, and Super VGA Cards by Richard F. Ferraro
The Indispensable PC Hardware Book by Hans-Peter Messmer
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.
I would also recommend Higher Order Perl. I went through it this summer after a recommendation. I don't know Perl, and found it was more focused on practical functional programming techniques, and provides creative and interesting justification for its topics, which can be rewritten in other languages too. Great book.
“This is also one of the most bizarrely delayed technical book releases I can recall. The majority of the book was about detailed optimization for the 8088 and 8086…”
I’m starting work on the (tentatively titled) “The Second Book of KIM.”
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.
The people who build all the solid, crucial parts of the infrastructure and tools that the vibe coders depend on. People who are pushing forward with new ideas. People who are building solid, snappy, delightful software. People who take joy in understanding the logic and creating solid, novel abstractions.
It is such a big category error to say "we're building simple apps without looking at code, therefore no one reads code anymore."
I'm not sure if this comment is meant as a little joke or observation, but I keep on seeing serious comments like this. It is serious anti-intellectualism to scoff at people reading programming books or understanding things.
Got it. Yeah, everything we'd consider "new ideas" demands, at the very minimum, a strident curiosity about how things currently work. Those people tend to read. A lot.
The only technical book I own is Designing Data-Intensive Applications and I think everyone should read the first part of it.
I prefer learning as I go and have never enjoyed technical books, but I think everything is basically a database and understanding those fundamentals is very helpful.
Software Design for Flexibility (2021)
This book left the deepest impression on me.
I was fascinated by the concept of additive programming. Personally, I spent a good while thinking about and studying the idea of "evolvability."
True, the overuse of flexibility can obscure control flow, and opinions on the book are divided but I learned many concepts from it. Since I often work on maintaining and modifying legacy code, this book was a great help.
My impression was the opinions on SDF aren't divided so much as most of the scant reviewers were unprepared to grok this book. As much as people like to cite SICP, "Advanced SICP" flew totally under the radar.
The other two formative experiences for me were using Cincom’s Mantis on the 3278 and Dataflex 2. Both made it obvious how quickly one could go from screen to persisted data, CRUD, application logic, and reporting with the right level of abstraction. Much later I described Dataflex as “Rails for the VT100”. Sadly, Cincom will not provide a hobby license to run it on an emulated 4381, and won’t even give away free manuals, and the company behind Dataflex (I don’t remember their name right now) seems to not even have any versions from that time. When I read Paul Graham’s Beating the Averages, it all clicked perfectly.
Code, by Charles Petzold should be on any programmer’s list - and the list of anyone with curiosity about how the modern world works. It somehow manages the amazing trick of being readable for the novice, but also containing nuggets of insight for the expert all at the same time. Such a well written book.
Agreed that Code is great! I'll pick up the second edition some day if I ever see it on a bookshelf.
The book is great - I love how Gary (IIRC) describes the centrality of data structures and how code kind of emerges from there.
The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles
by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21015000W/Elements_of_Comput...
The book goes all the way up to discussing the 386. It's just that the foundations is rooted in 8086, which is a large chunk of the book.
My favorite books (or the ones I have spend most time with) and that have been most formative for me are:
Mastering Turbo Assembler by Tom Swan
Zen of Graphics Programming by Michael Abrash
The Zen Of Assembly Language by Michael Abrash
Programmer's Guide to the EGA, VGA, and Super VGA Cards by Richard F. Ferraro
The Indispensable PC Hardware Book by Hans-Peter Messmer
Another from the same publisher is
Assembly Language Magic: Programming for the 8088-80386 by William H. Murray
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2192212M/Assembly_language_m...
I really enjoyed my intro to RISC assembly:
SPARC Architecture, Assembly Language Programming, and C by Richard P. Paul
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL9285324M/SPARC_Architecture_...
Any recommendations for VAX or 68k or 6502 assembly (or ARM)?
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
This one is really good.
https://hop.perl.plover.com/
Some other great low flying titles:
The Computational Beauty of Nature by Gary William Flake
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262561273/the-computational-bea...
The Nature of Computation by Cristopher Moore and Stephan Mertens.
https://nature-of-computation.org/
Algorithms by S. Dasgupta, C.H. Papadimitriou, and U.V. Vazirani
https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~dasgupta/book/index.html
and On Lisp, of course:
https://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html
Five Memorable Books About Programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3917165 - May 2012 (1 comment)
Five Memorable Books About Programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=128054 - March 2008 (14 comments)
I’m starting work on the (tentatively titled) “The Second Book of KIM.”
Show HN: The rarest tech books and docs you've probably never read(https://readrare.com/)
191 points|miletus|29 days ago|67 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50024055
Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time!
by Conrad Barski
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16807102W/Land_of_Lisp
Though, I've seen some comments that some of the code isn't idiomatic or something; probably not a great book to learn Lisp from.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/6905041-land-of-lisp
-- Not an easy book to get ahold of these days (like most of these)
http://landoflisp.com/
comment from pg: "Turns out the border between genius and insanity is a pretty cheery place"
An interactive portal to a digital book could rival or surpass the experience, but I haven't encountered that yet.
It is such a big category error to say "we're building simple apps without looking at code, therefore no one reads code anymore."
I'm not sure if this comment is meant as a little joke or observation, but I keep on seeing serious comments like this. It is serious anti-intellectualism to scoff at people reading programming books or understanding things.
s/no/new ideas?
The people pushing forward with no ideas are likely not reading much either.
s/ideas/understanding/
a glitch in the dialogue
That happened to me when I read The Little Schemer.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262560993/the-little-schemer/
(The other time was when I saw a Hasui)
https://ukiyo-e.org/artist/kawase-hasui
The Seasoned Schemer
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262561006/the-seasoned-schemer/
I prefer learning as I go and have never enjoyed technical books, but I think everything is basically a database and understanding those fundamentals is very helpful.
https://archive.org/details/software-design-for-flexibility_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license#BY-SA
(and we can finish with our own review)
I was in such a Discord for SICP (covering a section a week) with a few friends at codeandcoffee . dev last year, but it's been pretty quiet lately.
https://www.codeandcoffee.dev/
The Art of the Metaobject Protocol by Gregor Kiczales et al
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4088774W/The_art_of_the_meta...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_the_Metaobject_Prot...