
Ask YC: What would you put on a hacker's bookshelf? - Sam_Odio
I'll start it off:<p>- O'Reilly's Python in a Nutshell<p>- A 12" PB (I use my old PB as a more capable "kimble" and for quick SSHing into my servers)<p>- And to preempt the half-dozen comments suggesting them: Founders at Work &#38; Hackers and Painters
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klocksib
Hmmm, here's a list of books I really like:

Memory as a Programming Concept in C and C++ by Frenck

The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System by
McKusick/Neville-Neil

Learning GNU Emacs by Cameron, et al.

Practical Common Lisp by Seibel

The C Programming Language by K&R

The C++ Programming Language Stroustrup

The Design and Analysis of Algorithms by Leviten

Assembly Language Programming for the IBM PC Family by Jones

Essays/Collections:

Hackers & Painters by PG

Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman by Feynman

What Do You Care What Other People Think by Feynman

The Cathedral & The Bazaar by Raymond

Novels:

The Soul of a New Machine by Kidder

Where Wizards Stay up Late by Hafner

~~~
imp
Another vote for "Surely You're Joking Mr.Feynman" by Feynman

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henning
Harry Potter, Goosebumps, choose your own adventure stories...

Oh, wait, I have to look like I'm really smart. Um, Knuth.

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moog
The Feynman Lectures on Physics

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

A Latin/English dictionary for new company names

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NoBSWebDesign
Made to Stick

I've won several marketing competitions, an elevator pitch contest, and made
countless connections with others, using ideas from this book.

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spydez
"Lord of the Rings" and "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", because
seriously... you need to read something fun every once in a while.

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tomjen
Make friends and influence people -- will help you understand why people react
as strange as they do.

~~~
andreyf
I skimmed that book and it all seemed to boil down to "be nice". Am I the only
one who finds that ironic?

~~~
snowbird122
One of the most interesting parts of the book is that it claims you should
"never criticize" another person. It says that every person can always justify
their actions in their own mind and all criticism is taken negatively. As an
example, even mass murderers have been interviewed justifying their actions. I
tend to agree with this philosophy.

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slackerIII
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (for thoughts on
competition)

Managing Gigabytes (if you are doing anything related to search)

Writing Solid Code (especially if you are using C/C++)

Most of the research papers that come out of OSDI/SOSP: Dynamo, BigTable,
Sawzall, GFS, Chubby, etc

~~~
randrews
I second the Boyd suggestion. One of the best books I've ever read.

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bprater
Code by Charles Petzold is an awesome hacking book. It takes you from flipping
a light switch, thru simple circuits up to assembly language. It's beautiful!

------
jey
It really depends what sort of hacker they are. There's a sort of hacker you
buy a copy of "Pro JavaScript Techniques" for, a sort you buy the Dragon Book
for, and another sort who you give a copy of TAOCP.

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matstc
I'm surprised no one mentioned SICP.

I would also add:

    
    
      - The Little Schemer
      - Linux in a Nutshell 
      - Unix power tools

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amohr
The Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman

I know he's gotten some flak lately for ripping on 37signals, but this book
seriously changed how I look at the world... especially doors.

Freakonomics - Steven Levitt

Good for understanding the value of taking another perspective.

------
wallflower
"Becoming a Technical Leader" by Gerald Weinberg

Unconventional perspective on management

"How Buildings Learn" by Stewart Brand

One of the best books about designing long-term architectures. Excellent
coffee table book

"Envisioning Information" by Edward Tufte

"Walt Disney" by Neal Gabler

Excellent biography of maybe the greatest imagineer ever

"The Art of Software Testing" by Glenford J. Myers

~100 page classic. The central premise is that the successful test is one that
_finds_ bugs/issues not one that doesn't.

------
JayNeely
\- Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson

\- Copywriting (Teach Yourself series), by J. Jonathan Gabay

\- The Paradox of Choice, by Barry Schwartz

~~~
andreyf
Schwartz gave a Google talk on the book:

<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200>

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jorgeortiz85
Introduction to Algorithms - Cormen/Leiserson/Rivest/Stein (CLRS)

~~~
pius
But if you're old school, you'll have already had the old version (CLR) on
your bookshelf collecting dust. ;)

------
ijoshua
Principia Discordia; or How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found
Her

------
konsl
Upcoming:

"High Performance MySQL" (O'Reilly) (New Edition)

"Advanced PHP Programming: Developing Large-scale Web Applications With PHP 5"
(Developer's Library) by George Schlossnagle

Released:

"Building Scalable Websites" (O'Reilly) by Cal Henderson

"Scalable Internet Architectures" (Developer's Library) by Theo Schlossnagle

------
jsmcgd
"First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do
Differently". I know it has a cheap title but it there is plenty of merit in
it. The Gallup organization carried out a massive survey of various business
units in an attempt to discover commonalities between the successful units.
The results showed that there are essentially 12 things that must be true
about a unit in order for it to be successful.

Its a fun read if nothing else. It contains a lot of counter convention logic
that would be right at home in one of PG's essays.

------
edw519
Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston

Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham

I am NOT recommending these because I am an avid hacker.news participant.

I became an avid hacker.news participant AFTER reading these books.

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marcus
Programming Collective Intelligence - O'Reilly Media Toby Segaran

Art of the start - Guy Kawasaki

The art of war - Sun Tzu

~~~
raju
Huh! Currently I have Programming Collective Intelligence and Art of the start
on mine. Just started reading Prog Coll Intell. So far, I am impressed.

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corentin
* "Applied Cryptography" by Bruce Schneier. The first chapters are a great introduction to cryptography, but I found the few following chapters presenting cryptographic protocols mind-blowing. Some of them are so simple yet very clever.

* Political economy essays by Frédéric Bastiat ( <http://bastiat.org> ) were truly enlightening for me.

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hbien
[http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3087/2325563013_d62ca9cde5.jp...](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3087/2325563013_d62ca9cde5.jpg?v=0)

I'm a fan of "The Pragmatic Programmer".

Other books I thought were a good read: getting things done, 4 hour work week,
and founders at work.

I've also got all 6 seasons of 24 on my bookshelf =/, probably not the most
productive times of my life.

~~~
vikas5678
Ha ha, finally a 24 fan! Yeah I have all the 6 seasons with me too :).

------
Tichy
Some plants for better air quality.

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tjr
\- New Hacker's Dictionary (print version is nice for browsing)

\- The Little Schemer (or the whole series, if you really like them)

\- The Art of Computer Programming

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domnit
I haven't gotten through all of it, but I really like the New Turing Omnibus,
by A.K. Dewdney. It's about computer science, not how to program, so it would
be interesting to non-hackers, too. Even if you are familiar with all of its
topics, it can serve as a reference and clarifying tool for CS concepts.

------
andreyf
Wow, surprised nobody mentioned this:

    
    
       GEB.
    

Overrated in some circles, but definitely should be "on your bookshelf".
Hofstadter's other books, also:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hofstadter#Books>

------
jraines
Getting Real (37 Signals)

Programming Ruby (Pragmatic Programmers)

Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic Programmers)

Javascript: The Definitive Guide (O'Reilly)

a good text on database design & normalization, performance issues, and SQL

something to teach *nix basics, which I don't have but could have used

------
fogus
Off the top of my head:

\- Soul of a New Machine

\- The Cuckoo's Egg

\- Revolution in the Valley

\- Fire in the Valley

\- Compilers by Sethi, Ullman, Aho

\- Masters of Doom

\- iWoz

\- Steve Jobs & the NeXT Big Thing

\- Crypto

\- Code

\- The Man Who Loved Only Numbers

\- The Man Who Knew Infinity

\- ANSI Common LISP

Most of the books above are recommended because once reading them you will
have an uncontrollable urge to immediately create something brilliant. You
will not be able to stop yourself.

-m

------
cbthiess
Getting Things Done, by David Allen

anything by Edward Tufte

The Singularity Is Near, by Ray Kurzweil

Dip, by Seth Godin

------
victorkryukov
Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp
by Peter Norvig

(an excellent book even if you don't want to become a Lisp programmer)

------
mosburger
-Showstopper by G. Pascal Zachary

-The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

-UNIX in a Nutshell (O'Reilly book written by Arnold Robbins)

------
andrewf
DeMarco & Lister (yes, the Peopleware guys) - Waltzing With Bears: Managing
Risk on Software Projects

------
watmough
Programmers at Work, by Susan Lammers.

It opened up many many ideas to me, including flying, writing software for
_people_ , why simple software is harder to write than complicated software,
and gave me some indication of what 'being smart' really means.

I really highly recommend this book.

------
DarrenStuart
designing the obvious - a common sense approach to web application design by
Robert Hoekman Jr

The New New Thing

Masters of Doom (story of id software, great story)

Smart Start-ups: How Entrepreneurs and Corporations Can Profit by Starting
Online Communities

steven levy's Hackers and crypto also for the history.

~~~
zenlinux
I love Designing the Obvious - it's a great book on interface design and
usability, and focuses on web applications. Very relevant to this community.

------
kintro
Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister

Build to Last by James C. Collins , Jerry I. Porras

~~~
xirium
I've not read Peopleware but I've read Why Does Software Cost So Much? by Tom
DeMarco and Slack by Tom DeMarco. The former focuses on technical issues and
the sunken cost of software. The latter focuses on the agility of
organisations. Tom DeMarco started as a programmer and subsequently became a
consultant increasingly focusing less on technical issues and more on business
issues. Therefore, reading his books in order would be most relevant as your
start-up develops.

------
ujeezy
Steve McConnell's Code Complete (2nd Ed is the copy I have) -- it seems like
every second page I've read lays to rest some tiny unanswered question I've
had in the back of my head since I started programming.

------
jonvaughan
Of course there is:
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBACurriculum...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBACurriculum.html)

------
danw
Recommended:

* Everyware: Dawning of the age of ubiquitous computing

* Never Eat Alone

A few biographies of people you admire too. My favourite is "Buckminster
Fuller's Universe".

Has anyone got a recommendation for a good biography on Walt Disney?

------
Glimjaur
I would add "Getting Real" by 37Signals, for starters.

~~~
davidw
It's not bad, but it's free on the web. And in terms of "getting real", they
could stand to make a real book out of it by getting an ISBN number for it
with all the money they made off of people throwing their money at them.

And of course I'll add the obligatory mention of Squeezed Books, which is more
or less based on business books I've bought and enjoyed (although there are
also others like Good to Great that I wouldn't recommend).

------
pjf
"Silence on the Wire" by Michal Zalewski

~~~
corentin
Yes. Some ideas expressed in this book are really creative.

------
ojbyrne
O' Reilly's "Dynamic HTML" is probably my most well-used book.

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semigeek
The 4-Hour Work Week

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christefano
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson.

Drive it Forever by Robert Sikorsky.

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earle
SNOWCRASH for heavens sake.

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mindplunge
what's a 'book'?

~~~
dmoney
An early form of web site where all pages were static, and hyperlinks had to
be operated manually.

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curi
The Fabric of Reality - David Deutsch

Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hoftstadter

Karl Popper's books (too many to list)

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

------
kirubakaran
I would just put a thumb drive and a sticky that says isohunt.com

~~~
marcus
Call me old fashioned but I like my dead-tree products, it's an entirely
different feeling to read a physical book than a PDF.

Although I usually have soft copies of all my favorite books, so I can search
them quickly.

