I recently added some books by Nils M Holms[0] to my library. Given some of the titles you mentioned, I think you might like them. I enjoy their writing style. [0]: https://www.t3x.org/
Yeah! I loved LISP System Implementation.
Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?
71–80 of 104 posts
Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?
#72For a great introduction to file systems, I highly recommend Practical File System Design with the Be File System by Dominic Giampaolo, creator of the Be File System who ended up moving to Apple and designed Spotlight, the file indexing and search system that was introduced in Mac OS X Tiger. It's very well written and you'll learn a lot. When I was hired in 2006 as a summer undergraduate research intern at an academic storage systems lab, I used this book to study up on file systems design and implementation. At the time I haven't even taken an operating systems class (I had just completed my freshman year), though I already knew a lot about operating systems by reading a lot of papers and books on Unix as well as writing C programs that used POSIX system calls. This book helped me a lot on my very first research project: exploring the use of SQLite as the basis of a non-hierarchical file system. That was a fun project that helped start my research career.
I still refer to this book from time to time to brush up on file system basics.
Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?
#73The Art of Prolog is now open access: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/art-prolog-second-edition
You could think of it as "SICP for Prolog".
Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?
#74The Art of Prolog is now open access: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/art-prolog-second-edition You could think of it as " SICP for Prolog".
I own it and have tried to read it but man I have a really hard time getting past the first chapter. I think it would be better for me to study Prolog first for a while before trying to continue reading this. I've always heard good things about it.
Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?
#75Programming Pearls and More Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley contain short articles "in the realm of insight and creativity." These articles appeared during the 80s in Communications of the ACM, but I think they are still mostly relevant and inspiring today.
The second edition from 2000 is online available at https://archive.org/details/ProgrammingPearls2ndEditionJonBe...
Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?
#76Is GEB considered to be one? It's not exactly CS but can be related, plus it was very well written.
It's definitely interesting! I don't know if I've ever met someone who finished the book though. It's a skewed definition maybe, but I don't personally consider things well written if it requires inhuman dedication to finish. :D
I finished it. But I was in high school and a lot of it likely flew over my head.
Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?
#77If you're interested in compilers and programming language design, I highly recommend Bob Nystrom's "Crafting Interpreters". One of the best written programming books I've read. Free to read online: http://craftinginterpreters.com/contents.html
It's been on my list to read for a while! I wonder if it really is one of the best books on interpreters or if it just hit the right spot of being free online and in a mainstream language (i.e. not Haskell, OCaml, or Scheme) and with code you could actually run whereas most PL _textbooks_ stay too abstract and don't walk you through building a working thing.
It is by far the best book (website content?) I read around compilers.
It's extremely accessible, easy to follow and digest, plus it challenges you to experiment to see how things work by adding new features or breaking existing ones; fascinating stuff!
Now...if it wasn't the Java part and was fully dedicated in C it would be awesome! :-D
Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?
#78Type-Driven Development with Idris. If you haven't delved into dependent typing before, you absolutely owe it to yourself.
Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?
#79I think these meet the criteria...
P. J. Plauger's "Programming on Purpose" series of essays.
Purely Functional Data Structures by Chris Okasaki.
I would put both of these alongside Bentley's "Programming Pearls" books which I saw mentioned in another comment.
Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?
#80I think these meet the criteria... P. J. Plauger's "Programming on Purpose" series of essays. Purely Functional Data Structures by Chris Okasaki. I would put both of these alongside Bentley's "Programming Pearls" books which I saw mentioned in another comment.
> Purely Functional Data Structures
A classic! Good suggestion.
I'm curious to check out Programming on Purpose.