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Ask HN: What's the best computer science book you've read recently?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the best computer science book you've read recently?

#151

Post by amai »

amai wrote: post #147
aduffy wrote: post #20

The Algorithm Design Manual by Skiena. Each section contains a story of some situation he was in where he faced a problem which he solved by applying one of various algo techniques (DP, divide and conquer, etc.). After reading CLRS for a class, it was nice to see how some of the most common textbook algorithms have been applied by a notable computer scientist.

This book is highly overrated. Algorithms by Sedgewick ( http://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/home/ ) is a much better book for learning and understanding algorithms. Skienas book is a simple collection of (sometimes very exotic) algorithms. It won't teach you anything, it will only tell you what exists.

The book of Sedgewick is based on his lectures http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall12/cos226/le... .

Here you will also find a important chapter that unfortunately didn't make it into the book:

https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall12/cos226/l...

Re: Ask HN: What's the best computer science book you've read recently?

#152

Post by petra »

Dangeranger wrote: post #74
DubiousPusher wrote: post #64

The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken Basically it has you hands on work through the basics of every concept active in a modern computer save for networks and web. You use software tools provided with the book to design memory, ALUs, intepreters, VMs, compilers Operating Systems and applications. Available as a free online class at http:/…

Working through the class on Coursera now, and it's a lot of fun. https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer

I wonder if, in that same spirit, it's possible to make building, together , a complex microcontroller , a fun project ?

Re: Ask HN: What's the best computer science book you've read recently?

#153

Post by henrik_w »

kol wrote: post #87

"The Annotated Turing" by Charles Petzold: https://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Turing-Through-Historic-Com...

On my "to read" list, but haven't read it yet. However, I started watching these screencasts on Turing Machines and Lambda Calculus (examples in Python), and they are fantastic: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts/catalog/intro...

Also, I found this blog post good: "Tech Book Face Off: Gödel, Escher, Bach Vs. The Annotated Turing" http://sam-koblenski.blogspot.se/2016/01/tech-book-face-off-...

Re: Ask HN: What's the best computer science book you've read recently?

#154

Post by div0 »

webmaven wrote: post #68

The Plausibility of Life by Kirschner & Gerhart OK, this is an oddball one, in that a book on Evo Devo is pretty far from CS, but reading it completely changed how I look at software architecture, protocols, formats, programming languages, and a whole range of other CS-related topics. Superficially, it is what it says on the tin: an examination of the mechanisms by which life manages to evolve at all, that keep most…

This book influenced me tremendously. It explains how can random process (e.g. genetic mutation) builds highly non-random structures (e.g. the human eye). Recently I was using American Fuzzy Lop (http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/) to find bugs in my software, and was able to appreciate the surprising effectiveness of the "random" strategy it employs to discover structures in the program. For example, AFL could construct a valid JPEG using randomized input: https://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2014/11/pulling-jpegs-out-of-th....

Re: Ask HN: What's the best computer science book you've read recently?

#155

Post by amai »

denzil_correa wrote: post #149
amai wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This book is highly overrated. Algorithms by Sedgewick ( http://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/home/ ) is a much better book for learning and understanding algorithms. Skienas book is a simple collection of (sometimes very exotic) algorithms. It won't teach you anything, it will only tell you what exists.

> Skienas book is a simple collection of (sometimes very exotic) algorithms It has the same material as Sedgewick, doesn't it?

No, I believe there are more algorithms listed in Skienas book. But from Skienas book you will barely understand them and it won't teach you how to really implement them. Sedgewicks book is much better in that respect. One can compile and run the given Java examples and actually play around with them. Skienas book is a good reference for postdocs in algorithmic design. Sedgewicks book on the other hand is for people who actually want to implement these algorithms.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best computer science book you've read recently?

#156

Post by amai »

johntran wrote: post #75

The Mythical Man-Month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month It was written 40 years ago, but it is still relevant to today. Its so important to think about how to build effective engineering teams.

Another classic is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Project...

"It is the one thing every software manager needs to read... not just once, but once a year." (Joel Spolsky)

Re: Ask HN: What's the best computer science book you've read recently?

#159

Post by muralimadhu »

henrik_w wrote: post #146

The Effective Engineer by Edmond Lau. Not CS, more SW dev, but it is fairly new and I thought it was very good: https://henrikwarne.com/2017/01/15/book-review-the-effective...

Second this. Much newer than some of the other books listed here, but a great read nevertheless

Re: Ask HN: What's the best computer science book you've read recently?

#160

Post by progrocks9 »

The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond. It's inspiring for embrace Open Source collaboration and also very useful for manage projects. In Guy Kawasaki's quote "The most important book about technology today, with implications that go far beyond programming"
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