For me it's boring old SICP. It's just that good.
Ask HN: What is the best programming book you've read?
31–40 of 56 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the best programming book you've read?
#32The Little Schemer is my favorite by far! So easy to understand and follow. Definitely a must read if you want to get into functional programming
All books in this series is of high quality and very enjoyable. I am going through Little Typer at this time.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best programming book you've read?
#33K&R. It was the best programming book I read. I have not read many other programming books to be honest. I couldn't finish most rather. It's been years since I even touched C and at this point I am not going back, I know; but as an Android dev I wish I could find a non-lengthy book like K&R that would expose me to Kotlin like I was exposed to C, while helping unlearn a lot of Java.
I agree.
About 20 years ago C# was the second language that I'd learnt after C/C++ and remember just picking the C# language spec and learning from it rather than any of the books at that time since all the books were so wordy/verbose that it just didn't make sense. Especially having learnt C from K&R.
I haven't looked lately at other language specs, and don't remember others, but at that time the C# language spec was very well written.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best programming book you've read?
#34I’m currently enjoying “From Mathematics to Generic Programming” by Alexander Stepanov and Daniel E. Rose. One thing about the book is that it’s a lot more interesting than what a cursory scan of the table of contents would suggest. An O(log n) algorithm for multiplication doesn’t seem interesting at first. But the authors do an amazing job of starting from familiar ideas and building up to surprisingly beautiful and…
Sounds interesting. I know no C++, can I still enjoy the book? I have no interest in learning it.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best programming book you've read?
#35Most influential - Clean Code and The Joy of C (the first programming book I've read)
Most informative - Effective Java
Funniest - Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!
Best written - Eloquent Ruby
Most useful - Data Modeling Essentials
Re: Ask HN: What is the best programming book you've read?
#36Growing Object Oriented Software, Guided by Tests by Steve Freeman and Natt Pryce. It taught me an awful lot of lessons about object oriented design and London-school TDD. It was published back in 2009 and things have moved on a bit since then but it's still worth reading if you want to understand that style of development. Reading this book changed the way that I write software, very much for the better.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best programming book you've read?
#37Not sure this one counts but it's one of the best books ever:
Code by Charles Petzold - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/44882.Code .
Others would be:
Neural Smithing ( its now obsolete but was great at the time ) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1153223.Neural_Smithing
The Pragmatic Programmer https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/4099.The_Pragmatic_Pr...
The Effective series by Scott Myers https://www.goodreads.com/series/160060-effective-c
Re: Ask HN: What is the best programming book you've read?
#38If anyone has a good book about writing as simple programs as possible instead of as flexible as possible, I would appriciate it. Because the problem today is complexity and abstractions. It prevents us from changing code easily, deleting code easily, and understanding the full program flow easily.
Sounds like "Understanding Software" by Max Kanat-Alexander. https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Software-Kanat-Alexande...
That looks like a great read. I feel tempted to buy it right away. So few books about this topic our there. Huge thanks for letting me know!
Re: Ask HN: What is the best programming book you've read?
#39K&R. It was the best programming book I read. I have not read many other programming books to be honest. I couldn't finish most rather. It's been years since I even touched C and at this point I am not going back, I know; but as an Android dev I wish I could find a non-lengthy book like K&R that would expose me to Kotlin like I was exposed to C, while helping unlearn a lot of Java.
It's kind of a shame that C has fallen out of favor as a language for new programmers these days. I still haven't found another programming book as good as K&R and its hard to convince people to read a book for a laungage they probably won't use.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best programming book you've read?
#40Domain driven design made functional. It takes the weird world of functional programming and shows how it can be applied to building run of the mill business apps. Instead of being an app that only functional programmers can understand these apps, at least some of the domain modeling can be understood by stakeholders.
This sounds like "Domain Modelling Made Functional" by Scott Wlaschin, maybe? It walks through the software development process of automating a small business starting with requirements gathering, a valuable step that is often overlooked in programming books. It uses F# but I think anyone familiar with a typed language should be fine, and the info can be applied to any functional language. It uses the type system to great effect to enforce business requirements. I've recommended this book to at least five colleagues in the past year. Very good!