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Quirky computing books

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Re: Quirky computing books

#41

Post by taeric »

epolanski wrote: post #21
7thaccount wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, LoL was an interesting experience. I could write shorter Python versions of most of the lisp code in the book, but it was an enjoyable introduction.

If I recall correctly, the common lisp community doesn't like nor recommend the book at all. I remember going through the first 6 chapters and often going on the CommonLisp channel on free node to ask questions and eventually found out it was either wrong or misleading in many of the fundamentals. I tried to keep going through it but eventually gave up and picked the much better practical common lisp.

I'm interested to know more here. I don't think of the book as a reference, but it was certainly fun to read and helped spark my interest in common lisp.

Re: Quirky computing books

#42

Post by taeric »

Certainly a different kind of quirky, but Knuth's The TeXbook is a very fun read. I regret I don't have more experience with manuals, thanks to this one.

Re: Quirky computing books

#43

Post by zzzbra »

the_only_law wrote: post #2

Very cool, first HN post in a while that I think I’ll favorite. I love random books about obscure or niche technical subjects, but I usually only find them accidentally.

ty for introducing me to the concept of favoriting on this site, I literally had no idea.

Re: Quirky computing books

#44

Post by marbletiles »

I see a few mentions of beginner-level books that have struck a chord with people here and I empathise, as by far the computer book with the most formative impact on me was the Macintosh Bible 4th ed.

Certainly quirky, it was also one of the best attempts to capture why the Mac was different, why UX mattered, and codified for a young me a certain way of thinking about apps just as much as the Hacker Dictionary did for an earlier era.

The personality of its editor, Arthur Naiman, also shone through. I was sad to see when looking him up that he died in 2019. Short obituary here: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/sfgate/name/arthur-naim...

Re: Quirky computing books

#48

Post by macintux »

zzzbra wrote: post #43
the_only_law wrote: post #2

Very cool, first HN post in a while that I think I’ll favorite. I love random books about obscure or niche technical subjects, but I usually only find them accidentally.

ty for introducing me to the concept of favoriting on this site, I literally had no idea.

You can also favorite comments if you click on the timestamp.

I have 1785 favorited submissions over the 5 years since I found the feature; I really need to capture all of them and their links, would be a shame to lose all of that information if HN goes away.

Re: Quirky computing books

#49

Post by axlprose »

westoncb wrote: post #4

My favorite quirky computing book was something I found in the library by chance at my university when I should've been attending a Principles of Programming Languages course. We'd been learning Prolog in class for the past two weeks but I'm terrible at learning from lectures, so eventually I decided it'd be a better use of my time to locate a book I could teach myself from rather than doodling in class. IIRC it hadn…

Hm, the only Alice in Wonderland themed CS book I recall, is "Foundations of Databases" which has sections on datalog:

http://webdam.inria.fr/Alice/

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