
Freely available programming books - hitr
https://github.com/vhf/free-programming-books
======
vhf
I'm the author and maintainer of this project, which seems to end up here once
a year.

Since I don't want to answer to every post suggesting something, I'll do it
here: I know we could do better in terms of curating this content.

I would be very happy to discuss ideas towards the goal of better curation of
these lists. Please open an issue on github or shoot me an email!

I also have to say I started this thing 3(?) years ago, and today I have less
and less time to take care of it. I closed around 1800 PRs, which means almost
2 per day over the last years. I'm extremely grateful to the contributors
helping me maintaining this and I'm glad it's been useful to a couple million
people (according to the stats). Should anyone serious want to contribute in a
more involved way, please step forward, I could really use some relief. :)

My email is on github, my twitter is in my HN profile.

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Mithaldu
Take note that this list seems to include any book, regardless of how old it
is and how bad its contents are now, 10+ years later.

Before investing time in any of these, do yourself, and the world, a favor and
find the community of the language and ask them if the book you found on that
list is shit.

~~~
agumonkey
Let me add a tiny suggestion: sometimes even old, and obsolete has value.
There might be an intermediate step in the paradigm or exercise that will suit
your mind better. For instance: I failed twice at the calculating change
problem in courses (Coursera, SICP). I find a variant in an old Caml problems
book, that made me able to revisit the change problem and solve it on my own.

Seek for stimulation and keep growing. Cheers.

~~~
krivx
Totally agree, and I'll piggyback this to say that the quality is not always
too important either. Worrying about whether the book you are learning from is
"the best" is not as productive as getting on with learning the language. A
book really only has to good enough not to teach bad habits or explain
concepts incorrectly.

~~~
Mithaldu
75% of all Perl books teach bad habits and explain things incorrectly. I
didn't use the word "shit" up there lightly.

~~~
krivx
I guess Perl is kind of a special case :) I got up to speed by reading half of
some fairly old Perl book, then reading most of Modern Perl.

~~~
Mithaldu
You'd be guessing badly.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12036826](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12036826)

I've also had similar experiences with Java, nevermind Javascript.

It is an utter and simple fact that due to tech being an everchanging
landscape, any book more than a few years old is going to teach bad habits or
explain concepts incorrectly.

~~~
krivx
>It is an utter and simple fact that due to tech being an everchanging
landscape, any book more than a few years old is going to teach bad habits or
explain concepts incorrectly.

Concepts change meaning and good habits turn bad every few years?

Shitty books are shitty, OKish books will be probably be fine for a language
intro, even if they are old.

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vgallur
OpenLibra, although spanish oriented, has also a good collection in english.

[https://openlibra.com/en/collection/search/language/english/](https://openlibra.com/en/collection/search/language/english/)

~~~
mohsinr
Now this is good resource! Thank you! I just found a book about Arduino I
wanted to add into my list of fun experiments with Ardunio board.

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arviewer
Register at Packtpub, then open this link:

[https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-
learning](https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-learning)

You get a new book every day, although sometimes they offer books that are
already offerend months ago. The downside is that you need to do this every
day, and you need to bookmark this link.

They don't cover all subjects, but do have a lot of programming. I don't say
these are the best books, but in general they are interesting.

~~~
sotojuan
Honestly, Packt has the worst signal-to-noise ratio of tech publishers out
there. I know it depends on the author and reviewer but I've had plenty of bad
reading experiences. Even if they're free they still cost your time.

That said, the book featured today (Node Design Patterns) is worth a quick
read.

~~~
gedrap
>>> Even if they're free they still cost your time.

This. Free books are very far from being actually free. Reading a book can
take anywhere between 15 to 50 hours or more. So the cost of the book itself
often is a small share of the cost of reading a book.

Of course, free books are important because they are more accessible to people
who can't pay for some reason (teenagers, students, people from poor
countries). It's just that 'free' shouldn't be part of the equation, if you
can afford to pay $20 or $50 for a book.

~~~
arviewer
The book that was free yesterday is not free today. If you haven't claimed it
yesterday, you have to pay now. So it's a temporary offer.

If I need a book, I'm willing to pay for it. But sometimes these books are
nice offers. That's all. It's one option you have, nothing more. If O'Reilly
offers a better book, then I'll buy that.

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madebysquares
thanks! will clone this

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soapdog
yayyy!!! Awesome list! I am glad that my book about Firefox OS is there as
well. Thanks for gathering them all.

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mknocker
Thanks ! That's a good way to start the day :)

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_hao
This is gold! Thanks a lot for sharing!

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ace_33
Always great to have these on hand, great for sharing with friends interested
in the subject as well.

Thanks OP

