Introduction to Algorithms - Cormen/Leiserson/Rivest/Stein (CLRS)
But if you're old school, you'll have already had the old version (CLR) on your bookshelf collecting dust. ;)
Ask YC: What would you put on a hacker's bookshelf?
51–60 of 65 posts
Re: Ask YC: What would you put on a hacker's bookshelf?
#52Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (for thoughts on competition) Managing Gigabytes (if you are doing anything related to search) Writing Solid Code (especially if you are using C/C++) Most of the research papers that come out of OSDI/SOSP: Dynamo, BigTable, Sawzall, GFS, Chubby, etc
I second the Boyd suggestion. One of the best books I've ever read.
Re: Ask YC: What would you put on a hacker's bookshelf?
#53Make friends and influence people -- will help you understand why people react as strange as they do.
I skimmed that book and it all seemed to boil down to "be nice". Am I the only one who finds that ironic?
One of the most interesting parts of the book is that it claims you should "never criticize" another person. It says that every person can always justify their actions in their own mind and all criticism is taken negatively. As an example, even mass murderers have been interviewed justifying their actions. I tend to agree with this philosophy.
Re: Ask YC: What would you put on a hacker's bookshelf?
#54what's a 'book'?
An early form of web site where all pages were static, and hyperlinks had to be operated manually.
Re: Ask YC: What would you put on a hacker's bookshelf?
#55Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp by Peter Norvig
(an excellent book even if you don't want to become a Lisp programmer)
Re: Ask YC: What would you put on a hacker's bookshelf?
#56Steve McConnell's Code Complete (2nd Ed is the copy I have) -- it seems like every second page I've read lays to rest some tiny unanswered question I've had in the back of my head since I started programming.
Re: Ask YC: What would you put on a hacker's bookshelf?
#57Make friends and influence people -- will help you understand why people react as strange as they do.
I skimmed that book and it all seemed to boil down to "be nice". Am I the only one who finds that ironic?
More specific than that: see things from the other person's point of view.
Re: Ask YC: What would you put on a hacker's bookshelf?
#58"First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently". I know it has a cheap title but it there is plenty of merit in it. The Gallup organization carried out a massive survey of various business units in an attempt to discover commonalities between the successful units. The results showed that there are essentially 12 things that must be true about a unit in order for it to be successful.
Its a fun read if nothing else. It contains a lot of counter convention logic that would be right at home in one of PG's essays.
Re: Ask YC: What would you put on a hacker's bookshelf?
#59Off the top of my head:
- Soul of a New Machine
- The Cuckoo's Egg
- Revolution in the Valley
- Fire in the Valley
- Compilers by Sethi, Ullman, Aho
- Masters of Doom
- iWoz
- Steve Jobs & the NeXT Big Thing
- Crypto
- Code
- The Man Who Loved Only Numbers
- The Man Who Knew Infinity
- ANSI Common LISP
Most of the books above are recommended because once reading them you will have an uncontrollable urge to immediately create something brilliant. You will not be able to stop yourself.
-m
Re: Ask YC: What would you put on a hacker's bookshelf?
#60Hmmm, here's a list of books I really like: Memory as a Programming Concept in C and C++ by Frenck The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System by McKusick/Neville-Neil Learning GNU Emacs by Cameron, et al. Practical Common Lisp by Seibel The C Programming Language by K&R The C++ Programming Language Stroustrup The Design and Analysis of Algorithms by Leviten Assembly Language Programming for the IBM…
Another vote for "Surely You're Joking Mr.Feynman" by Feynman