For me, the blue Smalltalk book by Adele Goldberg was deeply formative. It was computing done right and from first principles.
The other two formative experiences for me were using Cincom’s Mantis on the 3278 and Dataflex 2. Both made it obvious how quickly one could go from screen to persisted data, CRUD, application logic, and reporting with the right level of abstraction. Much later I described Dataflex as “Rails for the VT100”. Sadly, Cincom will not provide a hobby license to run it on an emulated 4381, and won’t even give away free manuals, and the company behind Dataflex (I don’t remember their name right now) seems to not even have any versions from that time. When I read Paul Graham’s Beating the Averages, it all clicked perfectly.
I would also recommend Higher Order Perl. I went through it this summer after a recommendation. I don't know Perl, and found it was more focused on practical functional programming techniques, and provides creative and interesting justification for its topics, which can be rewritten in other languages too. Great book.
Programmers at work: I bought a used copy of it - probably after reading this the first time it was posted. Great book, if you can find it.
Code, by Charles Petzold should be on any programmer’s list - and the list of anyone with curiosity about how the modern world works. It somehow manages the amazing trick of being readable for the novice, but also containing nuggets of insight for the expert all at the same time. Such a well written book.
> The majority of the book was about detailed optimization for the 8088 and 8086, yet it was published when the 80486 was showing up in high-end desktop PCs.
The book goes all the way up to discussing the 386. It's just that the foundations is rooted in 8086, which is a large chunk of the book.
My favorite books (or the ones I have spend most time with) and that have been most formative for me are:
Mastering Turbo Assembler by Tom Swan
Zen of Graphics Programming by Michael Abrash
The Zen Of Assembly Language by Michael Abrash
Programmer's Guide to the EGA, VGA, and Super VGA Cards by Richard F. Ferraro
The Indispensable PC Hardware Book by Hans-Peter Messmer
Do you have an amazing idea for a NES game you’ve been itching to turn into reality? Classic Game Programming on the NES will show you how. This all-practical beginner's guide is full of step-by-step guidance on everything from graphics and music, to enemy AI, to the 6502 Assembler language you need to get the most out of the NES.
“This is also one of the most bizarrely delayed technical book releases I can recall. The majority of the book was about detailed optimization for the 8088 and 8086…”
I’m starting work on the (tentatively titled) “The Second Book of KIM.”
The people who build all the solid, crucial parts of the infrastructure and tools that the vibe coders depend on. People who are pushing forward with new ideas. People who are building solid, snappy, delightful software. People who take joy in understanding the logic and creating solid, novel abstractions.
It is such a big category error to say "we're building simple apps without looking at code, therefore no one reads code anymore."
I'm not sure if this comment is meant as a little joke or observation, but I keep on seeing serious comments like this. It is serious anti-intellectualism to scoff at people reading programming books or understanding things.
well written. i also feel that the generation of code becoming possible/simple means that our theoretical fundamentals ought to become that much more secure.
Got it. Yeah, everything we'd consider "new ideas" demands, at the very minimum, a strident curiosity about how things currently work. Those people tend to read. A lot.
Over the last few weeks, I've been eliciting a compiler for an experimental programming language called 5emel from Claude Opus 5.5. To give you the flavor, here's a randomly selected function from its compiler:
# The table of the program's own functions, by their descriptors, which
# the runtime searches for --memo-every and --memo-all.
def function_data(:defs) =
:rows = loop :next(:r = defs, :acc = []) (
| [] = r; acc
| [Def { :fname, _, _, _ }, ...:more] = r;
next(more, [acc, " .quad d_", fname, "\n"])
);
[" .balign 8\n .globl rt_functions, rt_nfunctions\n",
"rt_nfunctions: .quad ", show(length(defs)), "\n",
"rt_functions:\n", rows]
There's a lot of code in 5emel I haven't read; there's something like 15000 lines of TypeScript and JavaScript and 3000 lines of C. I've read almost none of any of that. I haven't even read all of the compiler, which is only about 1600 lines of code.
Despite that, I think I've been putting my extensive past reading of programming books to pretty good use in this process. 5emel is directed at finding a workable, though not optimal, general solution to one of the famously most difficult problems in computer science, and if it is successful, I think it'll be a real advance — and one that LLM coders can use as well as human coders. Better, maybe.
Maybe, six months from now, AIs will be good enough to devise better programming languages on their own so they can program things more easily. They don't seem to be able to do that right now, though, so my skillset doesn't seem completely obsolete yet.
However, I play go recreationally, even though AlphaGo already plays go better than any human ever could, and possibly better than any human ever will. Often go players consult KataGo or a similar AI to improve their game. So I anticipate that, even if my programming skillset is completely surpassed by AIs, I'll probably still enjoy doing things like 5emel (if I have the chance), just like I enjoy playing Minetest and walking around my neighborhood at sunset.
By the way, there's probably enough information in the above snippet to recreate all of the important parts of 5emel. I fed it to an Incognito Claude session and asked it to explain it, and it explained basically all of the significant aspects of the language, although it wasn't sure about some of them. You could probably elicit the rest of the compiler and runtime system from it, although you'll probably have to fight your way through a lot of the same problems I have.
I still think the return-on-time from a good book is greater than a lecture or video or discussion. There is just so much refinement and information density, plus the ability to skip around to find interesting content is hard to match. (there is also something to be said for reinforcement of memory via spatial awareness while reading a physical book that is lost on a screen).
An interactive portal to a digital book could rival or surpass the experience, but I haven't encountered that yet.
Software Design for Flexibility (2021)
This book left the deepest impression on me.
I was fascinated by the concept of additive programming. Personally, I spent a good while thinking about and studying the idea of "evolvability."
True, the overuse of flexibility can obscure control flow, and opinions on the book are divided but I learned many concepts from it. Since I often work on maintaining and modifying legacy code, this book was a great help.
My impression was the opinions on SDF aren't divided so much as most of the scant reviewers were unprepared to grok this book. As much as people like to cite SICP, "Advanced SICP" flew totally under the radar.
The only technical book I own is Designing Data-Intensive Applications and I think everyone should read the first part of it.
I prefer learning as I go and have never enjoyed technical books, but I think everything is basically a database and understanding those fundamentals is very helpful.
For me, the blue Smalltalk book by Adele Goldberg was deeply formative. It was computing done right and from first principles.
The other two formative experiences for me were using Cincom’s Mantis on the 3278 and Dataflex 2. Both made it obvious how quickly one could go from screen to persisted data, CRUD, application logic, and reporting with the right level of abstraction. Much later I described Dataflex as “Rails for the VT100”. Sadly, Cincom will not provide a hobby license to run it on an emulated 4381, and won’t even give away free manuals, and the company behind Dataflex (I don’t remember their name right now) seems to not even have any versions from that time. When I read Paul Graham’s Beating the Averages, it all clicked perfectly.
How about Higher-Order Perl by Mark Jason Dominus?
https://hop.perl.plover.com/
Some other great low flying titles:
The Computational Beauty of Nature by Gary William Flake
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262561273/the-computational-bea...
The Nature of Computation by Cristopher Moore and Stephan Mertens.
https://nature-of-computation.org/
Algorithms by S. Dasgupta, C.H. Papadimitriou, and U.V. Vazirani
https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~dasgupta/book/index.html
and On Lisp, of course:
https://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html
I would also recommend Higher Order Perl. I went through it this summer after a recommendation. I don't know Perl, and found it was more focused on practical functional programming techniques, and provides creative and interesting justification for its topics, which can be rewritten in other languages too. Great book.
Programmers at work: I bought a used copy of it - probably after reading this the first time it was posted. Great book, if you can find it.
Code, by Charles Petzold should be on any programmer’s list - and the list of anyone with curiosity about how the modern world works. It somehow manages the amazing trick of being readable for the novice, but also containing nuggets of insight for the expert all at the same time. Such a well written book.
If, for nothing else, Programmers At Work has Bill Gates talking about dumpster diving for program listings.
The book is great - I love how Gary (IIRC) describes the centrality of data structures and how code kind of emerges from there.
Classic!
The 2nd part reminds me of another in my personal library:
Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs
by Wirth
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL5191055M/Algorithms_data_str...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithms_%2B_Data_Structures...
Code and Elements of Computing Systems are two of the most recommended books (top 20) on HN according to a now defunct scraping site.
The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles
by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21015000W/Elements_of_Comput...
Programmers at Work has a new edition, so might be easier to find now! https://www.programmersatwork.net/the-book
Agreed that Code is great! I'll pick up the second edition some day if I ever see it on a bookshelf.
Related. Others?
Five Memorable Books About Programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3917165 - May 2012 (1 comment)
Five Memorable Books About Programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=128054 - March 2008 (14 comments)
Expert C Programming by Peter van der Linden comes up a lot in these discussions. One of my favorites.
> The majority of the book was about detailed optimization for the 8088 and 8086, yet it was published when the 80486 was showing up in high-end desktop PCs.
The book goes all the way up to discussing the 386. It's just that the foundations is rooted in 8086, which is a large chunk of the book.
My favorite books (or the ones I have spend most time with) and that have been most formative for me are:
Mastering Turbo Assembler by Tom Swan
Zen of Graphics Programming by Michael Abrash
The Zen Of Assembly Language by Michael Abrash
Programmer's Guide to the EGA, VGA, and Super VGA Cards by Richard F. Ferraro
The Indispensable PC Hardware Book by Hans-Peter Messmer
Excellent. I was just looking for the title for Abrash's graphics book.
Another from the same publisher is
Assembly Language Magic: Programming for the 8088-80386 by William H. Murray
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2192212M/Assembly_language_m...
I really enjoyed my intro to RISC assembly:
SPARC Architecture, Assembly Language Programming, and C by Richard P. Paul
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL9285324M/SPARC_Architecture_...
Any recommendations for VAX or 68k or 6502 assembly (or ARM)?
This looks like a fun book (that my library so far won't order..):
Classic Game Programming on the NES: Make your own retro video game
by Tony Cruise -- published 2024.
https://www.manning.com/books/classic-game-programming-on-th...
Do you have an amazing idea for a NES game you’ve been itching to turn into reality? Classic Game Programming on the NES will show you how. This all-practical beginner's guide is full of step-by-step guidance on everything from graphics and music, to enemy AI, to the 6502 Assembler language you need to get the most out of the NES.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1633438015
> Programmer's Guide to the EGA, VGA, and Super VGA Cards by Richard F. Ferraro
This one is really good.
The book that made me see programming differently and the one that taught me the most was The C Programming Language, by Dennis Ritchie.
AKA K&R for Brian Kernighan & dmr.
Another regret was not getting my copy signed at a certain USENIX ATC.
..tho, actually Dennis was there with Ken and Rob, not Brian.
functional programming in scala was probably the biggest level up of my career from a book
A dream of mine is to study some Scala at EPFL.
Likewise, (take/TA?) HtDP at UBC.
“This is also one of the most bizarrely delayed technical book releases I can recall. The majority of the book was about detailed optimization for the 8088 and 8086…”
I’m starting work on the (tentatively titled) “The Second Book of KIM.”
These are great books. I was going to suggest Zen of Assembly Language and Leo Brodie's books for this list from last month:
Show HN: The rarest tech books and docs you've probably never read(https://readrare.com/)
191 points|miletus|29 days ago|67 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50024055
Has anyone read or can comment on this one?:
Functional Design and Architecture: Examples in Haskell
by Alexander Granin
https://www.manning.com/books/functional-design-and-architec...
for Haskell there is also,
The Haskell School of Expression: Learning Functional Programming through Multimedia
by Paul Hudak
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8325694W/The_Haskell_School_...
https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/hudak/SOE/
and related,
The Haskell School of Music
https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/hudak/Papers/HSoM.pdf
My favorite two computer books are “Starting Forth” and “Let over Lambda”. It’s something about the language and the approach I like.
The intersection of these (illustrated-style ∩ Lisp) might be
Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time!
by Conrad Barski
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16807102W/Land_of_Lisp
Though, I've seen some comments that some of the code isn't idiomatic or something; probably not a great book to learn Lisp from.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/6905041-land-of-lisp
-- Not an easy book to get ahold of these days (like most of these)
Maybe not so hard to find! (worth a look and check out the music video):
http://landoflisp.com/
comment from pg: "Turns out the border between genius and insanity is a pretty cheery place"
Rarely have I felt the urge to fly out of my building and grab any random guy on the street and exclaim can you see how cool this is, can you please.
That happened to me when I read The Little Schemer.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262560993/the-little-schemer/
(The other time was when I saw a Hasui)
https://ukiyo-e.org/artist/kawase-hasui
After reading the little schemer, I bought two more copies just to lend out to people. It's that good.
With continuation(s) in this follow up:
The Seasoned Schemer
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262561006/the-seasoned-schemer/
What a weird book.
You don't like Japanese prints?
Who reads programming books anymore? People don't even read code
The people who build all the solid, crucial parts of the infrastructure and tools that the vibe coders depend on. People who are pushing forward with new ideas. People who are building solid, snappy, delightful software. People who take joy in understanding the logic and creating solid, novel abstractions.
It is such a big category error to say "we're building simple apps without looking at code, therefore no one reads code anymore."
I'm not sure if this comment is meant as a little joke or observation, but I keep on seeing serious comments like this. It is serious anti-intellectualism to scoff at people reading programming books or understanding things.
well written. i also feel that the generation of code becoming possible/simple means that our theoretical fundamentals ought to become that much more secure.
> People who are pushing forward with no ideas.
s/no/new ideas?
The people pushing forward with no ideas are likely not reading much either.
That was a typo - I meant new ideas
Got it. Yeah, everything we'd consider "new ideas" demands, at the very minimum, a strident curiosity about how things currently work. Those people tend to read. A lot.
Perhaps he was thinking of vibe coders.
s/ideas/understanding/
a glitch in the dialogue
Over the last few weeks, I've been eliciting a compiler for an experimental programming language called 5emel from Claude Opus 5.5. To give you the flavor, here's a randomly selected function from its compiler:
There's a lot of code in 5emel I haven't read; there's something like 15000 lines of TypeScript and JavaScript and 3000 lines of C. I've read almost none of any of that. I haven't even read all of the compiler, which is only about 1600 lines of code.Despite that, I think I've been putting my extensive past reading of programming books to pretty good use in this process. 5emel is directed at finding a workable, though not optimal, general solution to one of the famously most difficult problems in computer science, and if it is successful, I think it'll be a real advance — and one that LLM coders can use as well as human coders. Better, maybe.
Maybe, six months from now, AIs will be good enough to devise better programming languages on their own so they can program things more easily. They don't seem to be able to do that right now, though, so my skillset doesn't seem completely obsolete yet.
However, I play go recreationally, even though AlphaGo already plays go better than any human ever could, and possibly better than any human ever will. Often go players consult KataGo or a similar AI to improve their game. So I anticipate that, even if my programming skillset is completely surpassed by AIs, I'll probably still enjoy doing things like 5emel (if I have the chance), just like I enjoy playing Minetest and walking around my neighborhood at sunset.
By the way, there's probably enough information in the above snippet to recreate all of the important parts of 5emel. I fed it to an Incognito Claude session and asked it to explain it, and it explained basically all of the significant aspects of the language, although it wasn't sure about some of them. You could probably elicit the rest of the compiler and runtime system from it, although you'll probably have to fight your way through a lot of the same problems I have.
Also, this guy:
https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/1amon8p/d...
I still think the return-on-time from a good book is greater than a lecture or video or discussion. There is just so much refinement and information density, plus the ability to skip around to find interesting content is hard to match. (there is also something to be said for reinforcement of memory via spatial awareness while reading a physical book that is lost on a screen).
An interactive portal to a digital book could rival or surpass the experience, but I haven't encountered that yet.
Great points.
Once if the great things about books is that the author was required to plan out a path to take you along. Most shorter content skips that.
Also love physical books and the spatial reinforcement.
(I'm probably biased as a book author because books sales are definitely in a slump.)
Published since then, and one which I need to re-read yet again is _A Philosophy of Software Design_ by John Ousterhout:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39996759-a-philosophy-of...
Software Design for Flexibility (2021) This book left the deepest impression on me. I was fascinated by the concept of additive programming. Personally, I spent a good while thinking about and studying the idea of "evolvability." True, the overuse of flexibility can obscure control flow, and opinions on the book are divided but I learned many concepts from it. Since I often work on maintaining and modifying legacy code, this book was a great help.
SDF is CC Attribution-ShareAlike. I like reading the epub available at IA:
https://archive.org/details/software-design-for-flexibility_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license#BY-SA
My impression was the opinions on SDF aren't divided so much as most of the scant reviewers were unprepared to grok this book. As much as people like to cite SICP, "Advanced SICP" flew totally under the radar.
That could be the case! I found it a great help when working on programs that interface with PLCs.
One day, maybe soon, I'd like to organize an online book club to go through it.
(and we can finish with our own review)
Anywhere to stay updated in case you decide to organize this?
I'll post a "Show HN" if I do.
I was in such a Discord for SICP (covering a section a week) with a few friends at codeandcoffee . dev last year, but it's been pretty quiet lately.
https://www.codeandcoffee.dev/
The Atari Programming Manual, just for the cover alone:
https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroFuturism/comments/13fq9xy/atar...
Another on my reading list:
The Art of the Metaobject Protocol by Gregor Kiczales et al
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4088774W/The_art_of_the_meta...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_the_Metaobject_Prot...
The only technical book I own is Designing Data-Intensive Applications and I think everyone should read the first part of it.
I prefer learning as I go and have never enjoyed technical books, but I think everything is basically a database and understanding those fundamentals is very helpful.
with a 2nd edition released this year:
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/designing-data-intensiv...
and another memorable book with Martin Kleppmann:
Secret Colors: A Gentle Introduction to Cryptography
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL29241370W/Secret_Colors
The only