My favorite is Javascript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford. It's clear, concise, the railroad diagrams are super helpful, and from what I've seen of Crockford's lectures on YouTube, it also really captures his voice.
Ask HN: What are some of the best written programming books?
41–50 of 62 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best written programming books?
#42Geek Sublime by Vikram Chandra. The connections between the worlds of art and technology.
http://www.amazon.com/Geek-Sublime-The-Beauty-Code/dp/155597...
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best written programming books?
#43Knuth: he's an excellent writer with a sense of humor.
Anything coauthored by Kernighan is a good bet, though the material is not quite so ageless. Similar remarks for P.J. Plauger.
Norvig doesn't just write exquisite code, but good prose too.
I always liked Abelson & Sussman's style, even though it's more textbookish. Abelson also co-wrote Turtle Geometry, which is almost unknown these days and still eye-opening. (It's more of a math book than a programming one, but its point is to be both.)
Daniel Hillis: The Pattern on the Stone, The Connection Machine.
Richard O'Keefe, The Craft of Prolog.
Jon Bentley.
I remember pg's On Lisp as good.
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best written programming books?
#44Any book written by Charles Petzold is an enjoyable read, though particularly the non-MS specific titles Code and The Annotated Turing.
Java Concurrency in Practice (2006) is older but relevant and clearly describes concurrency on the JVM. A must read for any Java, Scala, Clojure, etc. software engineer; well-written, enjoyable, concise.
Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby by Sandi Metz is a fun read packed with good principles for working in Ruby that are applicable in general to object oriented programming.
Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns by Kent Beck is worth a read because the general principles are applicable to any OOP language.
Clean Code by Robert Martin is excellent but a time commitment. (If you had to pick between SICP and Clean Code because time is at a premium I'd err on the side of Clean Code for practicality. Writing maintainable code is paramount.)
The Joy of Clojure (Fogus/Houser) is excellent and mentally digestable even if you have no Lisp or Clojure background.
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best written programming books?
#45Taming text http://www.amazon.com/Taming-Text-Find-Organize-Manipulate/d...
Natural Language Processing with Python http://www.nltk.org/book/
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best written programming books?
#46Yo progg'n books — I'm really happy for you, I'll let you finish, but The Poignant Guide is one of the best books on programming of all time. One of the best of all time!
http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/chapter-1.htm...
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best written programming books?
#47While on this subject, would anybody recommend a book in french? It would be for my nephew who is quite smart, high-school age, and knows java an python. I would like to expose him to something different: lisp, or functional programming.
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best written programming books?
#48Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Elements-Reusable-Obje... Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby by Sandi Metz. http://www.poodr.com/
Maybe it's a matter of taste, but I found the GoF book really boring (and a little self hyped TBH).
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best written programming books?
#49SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) - https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-4.html... (free version)
When talking about the very best books of our area, this is first one that always pop in my mind.
Uncle bob have put beautifully here (5th paragraph): http://thecleancoder.blogspot.com.br/2010/08/why-clojure.htm...
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best written programming books?
#50C# in Depth by Jon Skeet is amazing and is great to brush up your C# skills!
A word of warning though: it's excellent for developers with experience in .NET, but does not serve as an introduction to the language/framework. The knowledge is not easily applicable to other languages either. That aside - it is still the best programming book I've read thus far.