Ask HN: What fiction/non-fiction book should everyone read on the topic of CS?
This should be interpreted in the broadest sense to include books like both American Kingpin and Practical Vim as examples.
- Networking for Systems Administrators, by Michael W. Lucas. Its explicit goal is to teach you just enough about networking, from the electron up, that you can talk to an actual network engineer and not make a fool out of yourself. It's a phenomenally high-ROI read if networking isn't your strong suit.
- The first 3 chapters of Mastering Regular Expressions. Regexes are up there with Vim keybindings in terms of sheer ubiquitous use no matter what stack you find yourself in. The rest of the book is excellent if you want to actually implement a regex engine.
- The Art of Unix Programming. Less technical. Gives you an idea of why exactly 'nix machines are like that, especially older commands. The 18 rules of design are worth committing to memory.
- The Linux Programming Interface. More technical. Pairs esp nicely with the above. Lots of practice C code one can run, plenty of short self-contained chapters.
- Not a book, but an online paper: https://how.complexsystems.fail . I see echoes of this everywhere I work, and it often helps me understand what kinds of "bad" things are secretly highly evolved resiliency measures.
- The Little Schemer. Just for the joy of solving problems.
Most of the others I can think of are too specialized to be of worth to everyone, but for what it's worth, William S. Vincent's Django for Beginners, APIs, and Professionals are a lovely triptych for anyone wanting to get into backend web dev.
Brian wrote The C Programming Language (the book), along with many other great books. He worked at Bell Labs during the time of Unix and it's a casual, whimsical telling of some of the history there.
https://codehiddenlanguage.com/
Algorithms to Live by: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
Mythical Man Month by Frederick Brooks
Showstopper
Books that pull me from the darker mood from time to time.
I was a teen when I read this. I should re-read
> In the end, we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference.
— Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop, p. 363