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Geek Books as Holiday Gifts

Posted by michael on from the see-spot-run dept.

Sybelius writes "Wired News is running a story that recommends a half dozen good books as holiday gifts. It's a much more inspired list than the one recently offered by Amazon. According to the reviewer, the books chosen are ones that 'any techno-loving, systems-tinkering, hardware-hacking person would love, but that even those who can't program the clock on their VCR will find quite readable.' Do Slashdot readers have any other recommendations for titles that fit this requirement?"

4 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Books? That's so 2003! by ErikTheRed · · Score: 4, Informative

    Give them a subscription to Safari.

    --

    Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
  2. Classics of CS by nkh · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Art of Computer Programming (Donald Knuth) and the dragon book on compilers of course (I'm reading the first and I will buy the second in a few days). If you don't like mathematics, a good book on functional programming will make your brain all warm inside!

  3. What I don't like about Safari by baywulf · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you surf too fast through a book they will warn you that a bot may be reading the webpages and they may cancel your account if it happens too often.

  4. Personally by MrHanky · · Score: 3, Informative

    I want The LaTeX Companion by Frank Mittelbach, Michel Goossens et al. LaTeX is a seriously cool piece of software for text publishing -- and far from easy to use, if you want to exploit its full potential (it's not difficult to produce simple but good looking documents, that's almost automagic). From what I've heard, this book is among the best on the subject. Too bad the title makes it sound like a condom.

    So Santa, if you read this: Please, please, please!