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No one ever reads blog posts titled "Decent books worth reading for some people" or "Mildly useful advice that applies in certain situations". The format of the web and sites like HN and Reddit almost forces hyperbole.

mattmight is a University professor, and presumably advises graduate students in his department. So he's in a slightly different role than your average joe programmer or even rock star computer scientist at the latest startup of Y-combinator fame.

In my masters program, there were about 16 books that I saw in every single one of our professors' offices. Over my coursework there, I had to buy about a dozen of them for specific courses. Before graduation I bought the others. While I haven't read every single one of them from cover to cover, I have extensively referenced every one of them. His list should serve the same purpose for the audiences he's identified.

Even in this position, or maybe especially in this position, I think it is downright harmful to suggest that there are books every student should read, like there is some canonical set of books that will make a great researcher of you and the world would become a better place if everyone would read the same set. I shared this view for a good while and I deeply regret it, you should instead focus on your problem domain and on problem solving, choose your lectures independently, don't get too bound or too concerned about books in general, and stay deeply critical of anything you read - e.g. you should deliberately look for holes even in the most praised works instead of admiring them blindly. That's the way you can progress and not just keep copying what others have done. And it is very good that not everyone has to and not everyone does read the same books.

In the end it is not about the fucking books anyway.

He did not give a list of books for everyone to read just suggesting 4 books to be used as references for graduate level writing which I find hard to argue with. Along with one for presentations and persuasion which you are going to do so I doin't think there is as much to argue with as you might think.

I got my PhD at that same university in that same field (PL, but before Might's time as a professor there), and I didn't read any of those books (I read TAPL afterwards). My adviser tried to get me to read one of the writing style books, but I seemed to have figured it out by myself :)

People are diverse. There are no must have books but there are many books appropriate for your context (writing your first paper, need help with style? Read that book, or let your adviser beat it into you).

It is OK to provide a list of things nice to read, even better if you list the demand context where the book will be useful. But to use an absolute...that could confuse incoming grad students.

Care to share the list? I think that I can guess what might be on it, but I'm still curious.

Can you name the 16?

> it is perfectly possible to read it cover to cover and still have very little idea about how to write an actual compiler.

I learned how compilers worked by studying a Pascal compiler written in BASIC that was published by BYTE back in the 70's. I thought the way it worked was a revelation, and completely magical.

Compiler books in general, however, tend to omit the messy details one has to deal with in building a production quality compiler.

I've heard several people say good things about BYTE. It's a shame there's nothing similar today. (Yet another thing for my list of what to do when I have lots of money).

The Pascal compiler in BASIC was "Tiny Pascal"?

Someone might have some scans of the issues here (http://atariage.com/forums/topic/167235-byte-magazine/page__...)

Here's a PDF about TinyPascal (http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Documents/Books/Pas...)

I find lots of links talking about it, but without downloads eg (http://www.vintage-computer.com/byte.shtml)

Here's some discussion of something called "Augusta" which is a 'tiny Ada'. (http://computer-programming-forum.com/44-ada/240dcc3af63e1fa...)

Yes, it was Tiny Pascal. I still probably have the issue buried in the garage somewhere.

I'm also partial to Creative Computing in the 1970's. It was full of fun artwork and silly games you could type in and run, and unabashedly optimistic editorial content. It's forgotten now, but it was very influential for me.

On a related note, I came across:

"Source Text of Compilers": http://exmortis.narod.ru/src_compilers_eng.html

Does not have Tiny Pascal - but appears to have a few other variants.

Warning: you will lose hours here:

http://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1978-09 (also features a design for a touch screen)

http://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1978-10

http://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1978-11

Completely agree on your last point. I have written a compiler for a small subset of something like Pascal for the JVM and it was among all other things a big exercise in software engineering. E.g. several times almost all the structure of my code became obsolete because a change in grammar or a need of doing different passes through the code / parse tree was required for a new feature in the language to work and that completely changed how everything else needed to work.

I feel like you're reading a bit much into a submission title. The page isn't titled that way and doesn't read in a way that suggests it.

I think I get where you're coming from though. I often wonder how many people have actually read the typical list of "classics" and "must haves" that are continually recommended without context, reasoning or even a gist.

You must be using Chrome. The submission title is the HTML title of the page.

While this HN post is certainly guilty of the puffery you describe, the actual site is just a collection of resources this professor thinks are useful for various categories of grad students.