Programming and computer science

Technology

This niche holds programming guides, language manuals (Lisp, Smalltalk, Perl, JavaScript), software engineering practice, open source, security tools and computer science textbooks on algorithms, theory and cryptography.

101 books on Programming and computer science, 2 of them tier 1, recommended by 33 people including Patrick Collison and Paul Graham.

101 books · 33 experts

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Structure and Interpretation of Computer ProgramsHarold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, 1985
The Cathedral and the BazaarEric S. Raymond, 1999
Just for FunLinus Torvalds, David Diamond, 2001
Rebel CodeGlyn Moody, 2001
The Success of Open SourceSteven Weber, 2004

The best books on Programming and computer science 101

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Pro

T1 Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman · 1985

The classic computer science text on abstraction and program structure

Open Library

The Cathedral and the Bazaar

T1 The Cathedral and the Bazaar

Eric S. Raymond · 1999

The essay collection that made the commercial case for open development.

Open Library

“Raymond's analysis of why decentralized open-source development outperformed commercial software development is, for Graham, both historically important and a live description of how good technical work happens. He has cited it in essays about what makes hackers productive.”Paul Graham

Recommended byPaul Graham Ryan Holiday

Just for Fun

T2 Just for Fun

Linus Torvalds, David Diamond · 2001

Torvalds on why he gave the kernel away, and what that created.

Open Library

Rebel Code

T2 Rebel Code

Glyn Moody · 2001

The reporting history of Linux and the businesses built around it.

Open Library

The Success of Open Source

T2 The Success of Open Source

Steven Weber · 2004

Political economy of production without conventional property.

Open Library

The Phoenix Project

T2 The Phoenix Project

Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford · 2013

Open Library

Working in Public

T2 Working in Public

Nadia Eghbal · 2020

Maintainer economics: who actually pays for open source, and how.

Open Library

Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams

T3 Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams

Mitchel Resnick · 1994

Open Library

“The first challenge to the centralized mindset comes from a delightful book by MIT Professor Mitchel Resnick, "Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams.”Michael Mauboussin

Recommended byMichael Mauboussin

Free as in Freedom

T3 Free as in Freedom

Sam Williams · 2002

Stallman, the GPL, and the licence that shapes commercial open source.

Open Library

Hackers & Painters

T3 Hackers & Painters

Paul Graham · 2004

Subtitled 'Big Ideas from the Computer Age'; collects early essays

Open Library

Producing Open Source Software

T3 Producing Open Source Software

Karl Fogel · 2005

The operational manual for running a project and its sponsors.

Open Library

A Philosophy of Software Design

T3 A Philosophy of Software Design

John Ousterhout

Ousterhout's core argument — that the enemy of good software is complexity, and that complexity accumulates through shallow abstractions and tactical shortcuts — maps directly onto the failure mode of AI-assisted development. Models are natural tactical coders. This book argues for the strategic counterweight.

unverified

Clean Code

T3 Clean Code

Robert C. Martin

Controversial in its prescriptiveness, but useful precisely because AI-generated code routinely violates every heuristic in it: long functions, unclear names, mixed levels of abstraction. Reading Martin sharpens the vocabulary for what to fix in a model's output, even if the rules are applied with judgment rather than dogma.

unverified

Refactoring

T3 Refactoring

Martin Fowler

Fowler catalogued the moves that make existing code better without changing its behavior. In an era where AI generates working-but-messy first drafts, refactoring is the core skill: not writing code from scratch, but reshaping what you have. The catalog of smells is a better prompt-debugging tool than most people realize.

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The Pragmatic Programmer

T3 The Pragmatic Programmer

David Thomas, Andrew Hunt

The craft baseline. Hunt and Thomas articulate the discipline that AI code generation does not replace: knowing when code is good enough, how to automate the right things, and what a working developer owes to the person reading the code next. The 20th-anniversary edition updated the examples but the reasoning has not aged.

Programming and computer science

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The best books on Programming and computer science 101

Experts 33

Authors 1

Recommenders 33

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