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ASK HN: Hacker Bibles
13 points by ice_man on Oct 29, 2008 | hide | past | favorite | 11 comments
I'm trying to build the ultimate collection of hacker bibles. These include books on programming languages, algorithms, mathematics, theory, engineering principles and methodologies, design, paradigms, operating systems, frameworks, industry commentary, business/startup-related, etc.

Below are my favorites (in no particular order), what other "greats" am I missing?

The Art of Computer Programming (three volumes + fascicles) - Knuth (aka TAOCP)

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - Abelson and Sussman (aka SICP, aka The Wizard Book)

Introduction to Algorithms - Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein (aka CLRS)

Design Patterns - Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides

The C Programming Language - Kernighan, Ritchie

The C++ Programming Language - Stroustrup

The Scheme Programming Language - Dybvig

Practical Common LISP - Seibel

Programming Perl - Wall, Christiansen and Orwant

ANSI Common Lisp - Graham

Refactoring - Fowler

UML Distilled - Fowler

Introduction to the Theory of Computation - Sisper

Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms - MacKay

Modern Operating Systems - Tanenbaum

On Lisp - Graham

Hackers & Painters - Graham

Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence - Norvig

Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning - Bishop

The Java Language Specification - Gosling, Joy, Steele

Learning Python - Lutz & Ascher

Programming Erlang - Armstrong

Programming Ruby - Thomas, Fowler, Hunt

Calculus - Spivak

How to Solve It - Polya

The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 FreeBSD Operating System - McKusick, Bostic, Karels, Quarterman

The Design of the Unix Operating System - Bach

The Unix Programming Environment - Kernighan, Pike

The Art of Unix Programming - Raymond

Godel, Escher, Bach - Hofstadter

Metamagical Themas - Hofstadter

Joel on Software - Spolsky

Code Complete - McConneli

The Mythical Man-Month - Brooks

No Silver Bullet - Brooks

The Long Tail - Anderson

The Art of the Start - Kawasaki




Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman (or anything else by Feynman is very relevant)

Understanding the Linux Kernel is surprisingly thorough not just in its coverage of the Linux kernel, but also architecture and OS design in general

The Design and Implementation of FBSD book now covers 5.3, which is much less dated than the 4.4 text.

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach is one of my favorite CS books and covers AI topics with surprising clarity.

The Design of Everyday Things

Linkers & Loaders, I'd hesitate to call this a bible of any sort, but it's a rarely-referenced gem that covers a topic few others do and it's relevant to me, at least.

Probably others I'm missing. This is a very good list though.


Thanks for adding to it yan! I have been meaning to get my hands on the Feynman books...



How could I forget Peopleware? Good call! I've also been meaning to read Pragmatic Programmer, thanks for the reminder...


W. R. Stevens: TCP/IP Illustrated Vol. 1-3, Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, and UNIX Network Programming Vol. 1 and 2.


The Algorithm Design Manual - Skiena

Purely Functional Data Structures - Okasaki

Algorithmics - Harel

The Practice of Programming - Kernighan & Pike

Concurrency Control and Recovery in Database Systems - Bernstein, Hadzilacos, Goodman.

Recovery in Parallel Database Systems - Hvasshovd

ACM Turing Award Lectures



Computer Architecture, Fourth Edition: A Quantitative Approach - John L. Hennessy, David A. Patterson

The Black Swan - Nicholas Nassim Taleb


Working Effectively With Legacy Code - Michael C. Feathers


Applied Cryptography - Schneier


I will add it to the to-read list!




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