Ask HN: What are the bibles of Computer Science?

#1

Post by laddng » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 3:57 PM UTC

I am building out my CS book collection, and I was curious to see if there is a widely accepted group of textbooks that are considered the bibles of different CS fundamentals. For an example:

* Brian Kerrigan's "C Programming Language" for C language

* W. Richard Steven's "IP/TCP Illustrated" for networking

Thoughts?

Re: Ask HN: What are the bibles of Computer Science?

#2

Post by tmaly » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 4:01 PM UTC

I would add Clean Code to the list just because the concepts are applicable to many languages

Re: Ask HN: What are the bibles of Computer Science?

#3

Post by jonkiddy » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 4:10 PM UTC

The Pragmatic Programmer from Andrew Hunt. Very informative book. It is a book filled with opinions/tips from experienced programmers, some of which apply and some don't. The ones that do are invaluable.

Re: Ask HN: What are the bibles of Computer Science?

#4

Post by simon_acca » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 4:51 PM UTC

Knuth's "The art of computer programming" is definitely the bible of algorithmics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_Programm...

Re: Ask HN: What are the bibles of Computer Science?

#5

Post by ZanyProgrammer » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 4:59 PM UTC

tmaly wrote: post #2

I would add Clean Code to the list just because the concepts are applicable to many languages

I think Code Complete is much better-Clean Code was more about (IIRC, feel free to correct) praising the glory of agile dev than good coding practices in general.

Re: Ask HN: What are the bibles of Computer Science?

#6

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 5:01 PM UTC

The Dream Machine is good for history and genealogy, much like the real Bible.

Edit: It's more popular to ignore history, but you can find Shannon's information theory, As We May Think, Cybernetics, etc. along with historical context. It might keep you from pretending you have invented the wheel.

Re: Ask HN: What are the bibles of Computer Science?

#7

Post by showerst » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 5:02 PM UTC

Introduction to Algorithms (CLRS) - probably the closest you'll get for Algorithms, next to Knuth. It's also updated relatively often to stay cutting edge

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/introduction-algorithms

AI, a modern approach (Norvig & Russel) - For classic AI stuff, although nowadays it might fade a bit with all the deep learning advances.

https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern-Approa...

While it's not strictly CS, Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative information should probably be on every programmer's shelf.

https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Informati...

Re: Ask HN: What are the bibles of Computer Science?

#8

Post by ng12 » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 5:05 PM UTC

SICP. In addition to being an incredibly illuminating read on programming fundamentals it was also the foundation of a religion on 4chan's old programming board.

Re: Ask HN: What are the bibles of Computer Science?

#9

Post by d0lph » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

Written by the creator of the language, 1300 pages long and weighing almost 4 pounds:

The C++ Programming Language, 4th Edition

https://www.amazon.com/C-Programming-Language-4th/dp/0321563...

Re: Ask HN: What are the bibles of Computer Science?

#10

Post by abakker » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

The Mythical Man Month - Fred Brooks

It is amazing how this book can be interpreted as having predicted the necessity of Agile/DevOps long before the tooling was really available to easily enable that methodology.

https://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Essays-Software-En...