Quirky computing books • Hacker News Board

Re: Quirky computing books

#111

Post by xhevahir » Mon, Aug 15, 2022, 5:08 AM UTC

abecedarius wrote: post #67

In the 80s or early 90s I read a surprisingly deep Logo programming book whose title/authors I forget. Not Turtle Geometry , but similar in coming from MIT Lisp/Scheme/AI people. One of the projects near the end was a kind of basic proof assistant. There was some discussion of OOP. It was written to go with some particular microcomputer Logo system. Does this ring a bell for anyone? Maayybe this book? https://www.ama…

I don't think that's the one. There's no mention of anything like a proof assistant in it.

Re: Quirky computing books

#112

Post by nils-m-holm » Mon, Aug 15, 2022, 8:36 AM UTC

throwaway675309 wrote: post #104

nils-m-holm wrote: post #82

If you are into quirky books, take a look at http://t3x.org For example: Scheme 9 from Empty Space ( http://t3x.org/s9book/ ), LISP from Nothing ( http://t3x.org/lfn/ ), but also Write Your Own Compiler ( http://t3x.org/t3x/book.html ).

I appreciate the effort but other than the play on Ed woods movie title, I'm not exactly sure what makes this book "quirky". Skimming through the first dozen pages available for free, it struck me as a relatively academic and dry treatise on scheme.

You will have to dive a little bit deeper. The S9fES described in the book is a tree-walking interpreter with decimal real-number arithmetic and a few other interesting (in an almost brutalist sense) design decisions. "Dry and academic" and "quirky" do not exclude each other, but you have to enjoy the subtle points and not expect to be hit over the head with superficial weirdness.

Re: Quirky computing books

#113

Post by wernsey » Mon, Aug 15, 2022, 8:48 AM UTC

roganp wrote: post #32

Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets https://www.amazon.com/Expert-Programming-Peter-van-Linden/d... Entertaining and informative. Highly recommended.

Thanks. Inspired by your comment, I went to see if it was available on archive.org. It was [0]

I've been feeling nostalgic lately and playing around with Turbo C in DOSBox, so I'll definitely check it out.

[0] https://archive.org/details/1.-expert-c-programming-deep-c-s...

Re: Quirky computing books

#114

Post by wernsey » Mon, Aug 15, 2022, 9:14 AM UTC

kabdib wrote: post #27

One of my early favorites was Donald Alcock's Illustrating BASIC https://books.google.com/books/about/Illustrating_BASIC.html... It's entirely hand-lettered. The author's afterword remarks that an attentive reader will notice the shakier lettering toward the end of the book. He wrote a couple other books on programming (I think he did Illustrating Pascal). It's a quirky approach, but very friendly and unintimidating…

It's also on Archive.org. I went there to check it out. Very nice.

https://archive.org/details/cambridge-university-press-illus...

Re: Quirky computing books

#115

Post by fogus » Mon, Aug 15, 2022, 1:40 PM UTC

larve wrote: post #60

My list: - The Plenitude - Rich Gold Not a computing book with code but it taught me a lot about what can be done with computers, and that they are marvelous machines. - Architecture of Symbolic Computers - Kogge An ode to what could have been if RISC and x86 hadn't steamrolled the landscape. - Thinking Forth - Leo Brodie Forth is wild, this book is wild, it's really a different world. After multiple attempts over 25…

Very good list, I look forward to diving into those that I've not had any exposure to. Without a doubt Kogge and Brodie will appear on my list one day.

Re: Quirky computing books

#116

Post by fogus » Mon, Aug 15, 2022, 1:53 PM UTC

hazelnut-tree wrote: post #94

The Microwriter is a one-handed portable digital word processor from 1978. It has an excellent 'New user's guide' that is easy-to-read and full of humour too. The user guide is written as a conversation between the "author" and a cartoon picture of a key (button) with a face, arms and legs. The key represents the impatient and inquisitive user who can't wait to start using the device. It's worth remembering that most…

This is a great suggestion. I immediately checked archive.org and found a bonanza of Microwriter material. https://archive.org/search.php?query=microwriter&sin=

Re: Quirky computing books

#117

Post by pdw » Mon, Aug 15, 2022, 2:03 PM UTC

abecedarius wrote: post #67

In the 80s or early 90s I read a surprisingly deep Logo programming book whose title/authors I forget. Not Turtle Geometry , but similar in coming from MIT Lisp/Scheme/AI people. One of the projects near the end was a kind of basic proof assistant. There was some discussion of OOP. It was written to go with some particular microcomputer Logo system. Does this ring a bell for anyone? Maayybe this book? https://www.ama…

That might have been Brian Harvey's _Computer Science Logo Style_. Downloadable here: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/

Re: Quirky computing books

#118

Post by pdw » Mon, Aug 15, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

Pamar wrote: post #101

I am a bit late at the game but let me contribute this: Programming Pearls - by Jon L. Bentley (1986) ISBN:9780201103311 It's an amazing collection of... small stories (the chapters were originally published as ACM articles I believe). Nowadays they read like a crossover between Codegolf and Martin Fowler's collected articles, but I still like to pull by paper copy out every 10 years or so and reread it. (There was a…

That's a great book. Its binary search is buggy though :)

https://ai.googleblog.com/2006/06/extra-extra-read-all-about...

Re: Quirky computing books

#119

Post by abecedarius » Mon, Aug 15, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

pdw wrote: post #117

abecedarius wrote: post #67

In the 80s or early 90s I read a surprisingly deep Logo programming book whose title/authors I forget. Not Turtle Geometry , but similar in coming from MIT Lisp/Scheme/AI people. One of the projects near the end was a kind of basic proof assistant. There was some discussion of OOP. It was written to go with some particular microcomputer Logo system. Does this ring a bell for anyone? Maayybe this book? https://www.ama…

That might have been Brian Harvey's _Computer Science Logo Style_. Downloadable here: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/

That looks like a good set of books, but different.

Re: Quirky computing books

#120

Post by Gordonjcp » Mon, Aug 15, 2022, 9:47 PM UTC

arisbe__ wrote: post #47

Leo Brodie, Starting FORTH (First Edition): available as a free PDF from FORTH Inc. here - https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/ One of my favorite books ever.

Oh, also the Jupiter Ace programming manual, which starts off with a very simple introduction to Forth and by around Chapter 22 has circuit diagrams for homebrew peripherals.