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Your Favorite Tech / Eng. / CS Books?

Posted by kdawson on from the art-of-computer-programming dept.

chris_eineke writes "I like to read and to collect good books related to computer science. I'm talking about stuff like the classic textbooks (Introduction to Algorithms 2nd ed., Tanenbaum's Operating Systems series) and practitioners' books (The Practice of Programming, Code Complete) and all-around excellent books (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Practical Common Lisp). What's your stocking-stuffer book this Christmas? What books have been sitting on your shelves that you think are the best ones of their kind? Which ones do you think are -1 Overrated? (All links are referral-free.)"

5 of 517 comments (clear)

  1. Best books? by librarybob · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As I'm a librarian I'm extremely interested in what people will suggest. The opinion of practitioners is a lot more relevent than that of book reviewers.

  2. K&R2 by dprovine · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Still the standard for programming language books, IMHO. I tell people to work all the way through it, from start to finish, and do every exercise until it works exactly as it should.

    C isn't a perfect programming language, by any means -- no language is -- but writing lots of programs in it gives you a feel for the low-level things a computer has to do.

  3. Best Project Management Book Ever by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Mythical Man Month. A classic. There are no silver bullets! As true now as then.

    --
    Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
  4. Dragon Book by hal2814 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools" by Avo, Sethi, and Ullman.

    To be fair, I'd like to point out that the 2nd Edition just came out when I picked it up and that's what I'm basing my opinion on. I've never read the 1st Ed (though it has a much cooler cover).

    Honorable mentions:
    The C Programming Language
    Any of Tannenbaum's OS books (I'm kind of partial to the Design and Implementation one that uses Minix as a case study)
    Deitel & Deitel's Java book (To be fair, it is good but overpriced if you don't already have to buy it as a textbook.)

  5. The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth by Christopher_Olah · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's good. I'm going to have to disagree with you on it being overrated. It's dense and long but it has lots of good things. I've learned a lot, despite only having started reading it recently.