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Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?

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Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?

#31

Post by eatonphil »

Jtsummers wrote: post #29
eatonphil wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought Knuts Literate Programming book ( https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/lp.html ) was extremely interesting, the paper "the errors of TeX" which is a part of it is one of the more interesting papers I've read. I haven't read any of Knuth's stuff because doesn't having 7 volumes kinda imply it can't possibly be well edited? Or maybe I really do just need to suck it up and read these books. I know it's…

> I haven't read any of Knuth's stuff because doesn't having 7 volumes kinda imply it can't possibly be well edited? That's a very bad assumption in this case. The contents of TAOCP are very well edited, just massive in scope and it's one man putting it all together. However, those aren't his only books. Concrete Mathematics is a completed text that expands on, in particular, the math in Chapter 1 of TAOCP. Literate…

Thanks for the suggestions!

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?

#32

Post by eatonphil »

carapace wrote: post #30

Not quite in the vein, but I think Ted Nelson's "Computer Lib/Dream Machines" deserves mention (although it's partly history.) https://computerlibbook.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines https://archive.org/details/computer-lib-dream-machines - - - - Also "Scalable Internet Architectures" by Theo Schlossnagle

> Not quite in the vein, but I think Ted Nelson's "Computer Lib/Dream Machines" deserves mention (although it's partly history.)

That does look very interesting!

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?

#33

Post by thoughtFrame »

Somewhat varied but I think some of these may fit your criteria.

Programming Erlang by Joe Armstrong

Communicating Sequential Processes by Hoare

The algorithmic beauty of plants by Prusinkiewicz, Lindenmayer

Network Performance Analysis Using the J Programming Language by Alan Holt

Relational Programming in miniKanren by William Byrd

Exercises in Programming Style by Cristina Videira Lopes

edit: also "SAT/SMT by example" by Dennis Yurichev

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?

#34

Post by eatonphil »

thoughtFrame wrote: post #33

Somewhat varied but I think some of these may fit your criteria. Programming Erlang by Joe Armstrong Communicating Sequential Processes by Hoare The algorithmic beauty of plants by Prusinkiewicz, Lindenmayer Network Performance Analysis Using the J Programming Language by Alan Holt Relational Programming in miniKanren by William Byrd Exercises in Programming Style by Cristina Videira Lopes edit: also "SAT/SMT by exam…

Nice list! Anything with Hoare has my ear.

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?

#35

Post by DashAnimal »

Here are the few I've really enjoyed.

Inside the Machine: An Illustrated Introduction to Microprocessors and Computer Architecture

Explains how Microprocessors operate, going from operands and building up a lot of the execution tricks used, all whilst going through popular examples of CPUs (thee pentium chips, PowerPCs, etc), discussing their history, their specs, their capabilities, etc.

Hardware and Support Support for Virtualization

This one corners on useful, but it's short and it's free and unless you work in virtualization it probably won't be much use but I found it helpful in getting a grasp on what is actually happening.

------

Edit: Removed history books but, for anyone interested, the ones I listed previously were The Idea Factory, Valley of Genius, and Android: The Team that Built the Android OS

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?

#36

Post by hyperman1 »

There was one about Mockingbirds I read a few decades ago. I think this is the one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Mock_a_Mockingbird

Nothing explicit computery or even technical in there. Only all kinds of invented birds with specific weird behavior. You need to know nothing above what a 10 year old knows (and be interested in logic). And yet, when you're at the end, it turns out you know what 'Y combinator' actually means.

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?

#37

Post by eatonphil »

DashAnimal wrote: post #35

Here are the few I've really enjoyed. Inside the Machine: An Illustrated Introduction to Microprocessors and Computer Architecture Explains how Microprocessors operate, going from operands and building up a lot of the execution tricks used, all whilst going through popular examples of CPUs (thee pentium chips, PowerPCs, etc), discussing their history, their specs, their capabilities, etc. Hardware and Support Support…

> Hardware and Support Support for Virtualization

This whole series is truly awesome.

> Inside the Machine: An Illustrated Introduction to Microprocessors and Computer Architecture

I'm always looking for more like nand2tetris or Harris and Harris' book on comp arch to suggest. Thank you!

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?

#38

Post by eatonphil »

hyperman1 wrote: post #36

There was one about Mockingbirds I read a few decades ago. I think this is the one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Mock_a_Mockingbird Nothing explicit computery or even technical in there. Only all kinds of invented birds with specific weird behavior. You need to know nothing above what a 10 year old knows (and be interested in logic). And yet, when you're at the end, it turns out you know what 'Y combinator' actua…

> And yet, when you're at the end, it turns out you know what 'Y combinator' actually means.

Sweet. I just learned about this book earlier today. It's on my list now!

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?

#40

Post by mindcrime »

Maybe Clever Algorithms: Nature-Inspired Programming Recipes[1]. These techniques might not be useful to everybody, all the time, but they can be very handy in places.

Edit:

A couple of other suggestions.

Managing Gigabytes: Compressing and Indexing Documents and Images[2]

Mining of Massive Datasets[3]

Algorithm Design Manual[4]

Network Algorithmics[5]

Neural Network Design[6]

I think all of these fall into the category of "Won't be applicable to everyone, but can be good for those who need this kind of stuff."

[1]: https://github.com/clever-algorithms/CleverAlgorithms

[2]: https://people.eng.unimelb.edu.au/ammoffat/mg/

[3]: http://www.mmds.org/

[4]: https://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steven-Skiena...

[5]: https://www.amazon.com/Network-Algorithmics-Interdisciplinar...

[6]: https://hagan.okstate.edu/NNDesign.pdf

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