Ask HN: What are the 3 programming books you learned the most from? Mine

53 points by aj-4 6 years ago | 9 comments

Structure Interpretation of Computer Programs - enough is said about it here. must-read.

The Algorithm Design Manual - Skiena - a formidable way to learn algorithms and associated concepts. still challenging to read, but war stories offer great prose and I actually laughed several times. if you couple this book with Robert Sedgewick's online Princeton algorithms course you will be quite formidable with algos.

Designing Data Intensive Applications - Klepperman - Mind blowing for me. Finally felt like I could reason about data-driven design by understanding modeling, stores, and distributed, as well as event-driven systems. Absolute must-read especially to fill the gaps if you don't have a CS degree.

These 3 have been above all the rest for me, would love to add another one to this list, please share!

ArtWomb 6 years ago |

The academic CS tomes never really gelled for me. It was .NET programmer Charles Petzold's guides that made things click

http://www.charlespetzold.com/books.html

I'd also give a shout out to Micheal Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book that taught me the adage "the best optimizer is between your ears"

http://www.jagregory.com/abrash-black-book/

Reference I keep close at hand is Ilya Grigorik's High Performance Browser Networking. Web apps with sub second latency can make all the difference

https://hpbn.co/

gitgud 6 years ago |

Surprised no ones mentioned these:

1. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

2. Clean Code

3. The Pragmatic Programmer

They've helped immensely from working with small functions to the organisation of systems and systems of systems.

seatback1 6 years ago |

1. Head First Java

2. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

3. Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture

jpamata 6 years ago |

1. Cracking the Coding Interview

2. Effective Java

3. Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems

eykanspelgud 6 years ago |

Automate the boring stuff.

I'm reading/have read other books listed by others in this thread so I won't list them, but this book what made me continue programming after I put it down.

quickthrower2 6 years ago |

Thanks for posting this, I am going to ask my boss to order "Designing Data Intensive Applications" now!

deepaksurti 6 years ago |

1. Ansi Common Lisp - Paul Graham

2. On Lisp - Paul Graham

3. Elements of Computing Systems - Noam Nisan

aj-4 6 years ago | |

did you work with lisp day-to-day or just find the derived programming principles to be super valuable?

deepaksurti 6 years ago | | |

In my current role, no lisp day-to-day; but I do use it for fast prototyping. Definitely, the derived principles are super valuable and the ROI on effort spent in learning Lisp is most likely permanent, a rare ROI.