Old Computing Books | Hacker News Reader

Old Computing Books

computinghistory.org.uk

53 pointsjoebig12 comments

My first thought was "I wonder if the C programming language would be on that list" and sure enough... Worth noting that, although the book is 45+ years old, it's aged incredibly well (I know, there have been multiple "patches" applied since the first edition). But considering how books that came out 5 years ago are wildly outdated today, while this one is just as relevant as it was when it first came out is a huge achievement. Major props to Ritchie and Kernighan.

That's because hardware has bent over backwards to maintain the illusion of the C memory model.

Can you elaborate on this?

Here's a related article and discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16967675

I think my favorite old computing book is the tannenbaum operating systems text book. It features minix and has some super interesting things about the software license and all that. Minix has some super interesting recent history involving the intel management engine.

Even a collection pointing to classic AI books: https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/sec/14007/Artificial-Int...

Got books to donate? Looks like they've got an email address for that: collection@computinghistory.org.uk

Even the center for computing history can't spell "Ada" right... :(

Well, in fairness to them, one of the two books in the list spells it all caps right there on the cover.

Same is true of the Java books, and yet it's not JAVA.

Well, I wasn't arguing that the language is actually named ADA. I was just saying it seems like a common mistake.

Plus for some reason (not sure why, exactly), ADA looks more likely to me to be an acronym than JAVA does. Also, way more people are familiar with Java than Ada, and I'm sure the number of programmers who do not remember (or never knew) who Ada Lovelace was closely resembles the number that are unfamiliar with Ada the language.

Needs more KIM-1.

The KIM-1 (and MOS Programming and Hardware) manuals are out there — as is "The First Book of KIM."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com