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Ask Slashdot: Books for a Comp Sci Graduate Student?

Posted by Unknown on from the suggesting-some-knowledge dept.

peetm (781139) writes "Having visited with me and my wife recently, the girlfriend of an ex-student of mine (now taking an M.Sc. in pure CS) asked me to suggest useful books for her boyfriend: '... He recently mentioned that he would love to have a home library, like the one you have, with variety of good, useful and must-have books from different authors. ... Mostly, I was thinking your advice would be priceless when it comes to computer science related books, but .. I would appreciate any sort of advice on books from you. ...' Whilst I could scan my own library for ideas, I doubt that I'm really that 'current' with what's good, or whether my favorites would be appropriate: I've not taught on the M.Sc. course for a while, and in some cases, and just given their price, I shouldn't really recommend such books that are just pet loves of mine — especially to someone who doesn't know whether they'd even be useful.

And, before you ask: YES, we do have a reading list, but given that he'll receive this as part of this course requirement anyway, I'd like to tease readers to suggest good reads around the periphery of the subject." I'll throw out Pierce's Types and Programming Languages (and probably Advanced Topics in Types and Programming Languages ), and Okasaki's Purely Functional Data Structures .

19 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. knuth's art of computer programming by whyloginwhysubscribe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't think knuth's 3 volumes have dated at all- they're still the definitive computer science tomes.

    1. Re:knuth's art of computer programming by Animats · · Score: 4, Interesting

      They're kind of dated, because few people do sorts and list manipulation at that level any more. I have both an original edition and a current edition of vols. 1-3, but haven't looked at them in years.

    2. Re:knuth's art of computer programming by Yaztromo · · Score: 5, Informative

      They're kind of dated, because few people do sorts and list manipulation at that level any more. I have both an original edition and a current edition of vols. 1-3, but haven't looked at them in years.

      Sure, for the average programmer these days who relies on existing libraries, these probably aren't all that useful.

      As a grad student working on a thesis and other papers however, Knuth's books are invaluable for citations. Need to defend the use of a specific algorithm? Cite Knuth. His books were invaluable citation material for when I wrote and defended my thesis a few years back.

      This is, of course, good science. You may not need to use Knuth to program your own B* tree, but you have a pretty much universally accepted reference for citation if you use one in your research.

      Yaz

  2. relations by cosm · · Score: 4, Funny

    A book on consise exposition without complex family relations; one that cuts right to the content. That would be a good start.

    --
    'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
    1. Re:relations by MikeTheGreat · · Score: 4, Funny

      "Having visited with me and my wife recently, the girlfriend of an ex-student of mine (now taking an M.Sc. in pure CS) asked me to suggest useful books for her boyfriend: '..

      This brings to mind the ever-classic::

      Dark Helmet: Before you die there is something you should know about us, Lone Star.
      Lone Starr: What?
      Dark Helmet: I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate.
      Lone Starr: What's that make us?
      Dark Helmet: Absolutely nothing! Which is what you are about to become.
      (from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...)

  3. Classics by DaveAtFraud · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Brooks - "The Mythical Man-month"
    Yourdon - "Death March"
    DeMarco & Lister - "Peopleware"

    Of course he may change majors after reading them.

    Cheers,
    Dave

    --
    They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
    Ben
  4. Computer Science by hackus · · Score: 3, Informative

    Since most of the "Computer Science" we call today is actually "industrial science" with variations on things we already know, you shouuld go back and learn all of the fundamentals fo the science, which in my opinion was established by Knuth.

    Which, I can assure you, you haven't learned them if you went to a typical University in the United States. For one thing, you spent way too much time reading about other things to cover the basics of the science of computing in 4 years at a University.

    http://www.amazon.com/Computer...

    This should be a graduation present for all University Students, and a cornerstone for those who want to avoid college because of cost/indoctrinized education and begin studying the topic yourself.

    What I like about this set of books is, you can even as a beginner, skim the text and if you like, avoid the theory, and immediately start trying to write code and in many cases, the algorithms in the code point to an understanding to the process of many mathematical functions.

    With this understanding, you can start trying to tackle some of the fairly formidable abstract ideas in the text which forms the foundations of computer science.

    For example, I learned what integration was about from a computer algorithm this way when I was 14, and once I understood what was happening with the code the math was much simpler. I always thought Calculas at the time was big and scary. Not so scary when you do it in C code.

    Calculas = Fancy Adding and Subtracting. :-)

    But you won't touch any subject matter right now, or in the foreseeable future that Donald didn't already cover in these volumes.

    --
    Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
    1. Re:Computer Science by ImprovOmega · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The brilliance of calculus is the usage of infinitely many infinitely small rectangular slices to nonetheless derive an exact measurement of the finite area under a curve. At its core, calculus is the merging of the infinite and the finite. When you truly understand it, it is one of the most elegant and beautiful discoveries in human history.

  5. Code Complete by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Code Complete has been one of the most useful texts that I have found.

  6. Some non-Knuth suggestions by Stephan+Schulz · · Score: 4, Interesting
    --

    Stephan

  7. Design Patterns by the Gang Of Four by mrflash818 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I recommend "Design Patterns" by Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides

    --
    Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
    1. Re:Design Patterns by the Gang Of Four by swillden · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I recommend "Design Patterns" by Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides

      I have trepidation about recommending the GoF book. It's a great book, don't get me wrong, but I think it should be deferred until the reader has a non-trivial amount of real-world experience to dampen any excess of enthusiasm for the patterns. Perhaps what's best is that new software engineers read GoF but are strongly cautioned that they should use it primarily to recognize common patterns, rather than as a recipe book for how they should structure their software, at least until they have more experience.

      It should also be coupled with serious study of anti-patterns. In fact, I'd say that for new professionals a study of anti-patterns is actually more useful than a study of patterns.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  8. Computer Science Books by Angrywhiteshoes · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Introduction to Probabilistic Automata - Azaria Paz
    Anything by Claude Shannon
    Information theory and statistics - Sollomon Kullback

  9. Tufte by Sez+Zero · · Score: 4, Informative
    The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, because you'll probably to do it eventually.

    http://www.edwardtufte.com/tuf...

  10. Classics by chriswaco · · Score: 3, Informative

    K & R
    Effective C++
    Object-Oriented Software Construction by Bertrand Meyer
    The PostgreSQL manual

  11. Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Maste by CokoBWare · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master - It's not a Computer Science book, but it really talks about essential things any programmer should know in order to excel in their career.

  12. Re:"Science" == "Argumentum ab auctoritate" ?!?!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    You seem to misunderstand what a citation is. A citation is not saying, "Here, this is true because Mr. XYZ said so," but, "Here, this is being accepted as true (or just considered even) because Mr. XYZ gave good argument/data in source ABC." It is not an appeal to authority, it is reducing redundancy by not re-deriving something already written about elsewhere. And this is a good science practice, as it is rare to be working on a topic where no one has already done some theory work or found some relevant experimental data.

    You should have spent a lot of time deriving things in your undergrad and early grad courses, and you should double check the calculations of any citation central to your work to catch typos or actual mistakes. But by the time of writing actual papers or your doctoral thesis, you shouldn't be wasting reader's times by re-deriving things in detail beyond what is needed for outlining background and covering your premises. Unless your new contributions are a better way to present or derive the same solution, or showing a mistake in the derivation, you move on to deriving new things while cite others for stuff already done.

  13. Re:"Science" == "Argumentum ab auctoritate" ?!?!?! by Yaztromo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Cite Knuth... This is, of course, good science.

    Well at least Professor Knuth is still alive, and I don't [YET!] need to refer to the poor man as spinning in his grave.

    AC posted an excellent response here.. In the event you're filtering AC's, take the time to read it, as it's completely on point.

    I would add is this: if you've never completed a Masters thesis or Doctoral dissertation, just try submitting one to your committee without adequate citations. If you write somewhere "I used well-known algorithm ABC because of XYZ" and you don't have a citation for that algorithm, you'll be sent back for rewrites pretty quickly to add appropriate citations.

    By way of example, in my Masters thesis several years ago, I mentioned Unix diff , without a citation. Why would this need a citation? It was mostly mentioned in passing, and every computer scientist under the sun knows what diff is, right?

    Committee came back asking for further citations on a few things, including diff (which, for the record, is "Hunt, J. W., and McIlroy, M. D. An algorithm for differential file comparison. CSTR, 41 (1976).")

    Using citations isn't an appeal to authority. It's akin to using an existing library call in programming. Just as you wouldn't roll-your-own quick sort algorithm when coding, someone writing a scientific paper doesn't re-invent every algorithm ever derived. You find someone who has already done that, and you cite them. The AOCP is useful in this regard due to the sheerly massive number of algorithms Knuth describes. It's hard to go through a Computer Science program and not use one of these algorithms. Knuth himself likewise cites all of the algorithms in the AOCP, so it's not an appeal to his authority, as he delegates that out to others appropriately. It's simply useful because instead of having to track down papers written in the 1960's on your own, you can cite Knuth who cites those papers for you. This is why the AOCP is useful for a graduate student.

    FWIW, I cited Knuth. I needs an algorithm to calculate variance, and another on the Box-Meuller transformation. Art of Computer Programming had one for each, which I adapted for my needs, and cited appropriately.

    Yaz

  14. Feynman's Lectures on Computation by jerpyro · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I suggest Richard Feynman's Lectures on Computation. People in the physics world will know the name, but the topics covered are great for CS/CE topics, and probably not things that were considered and/or covered in regular classes.

    http://www.amazon.com/Feynman-...