Learning More

Unfortunately, this page is not well-organized yet. As it evolves, it might.

I don't necessarily recommend that you buy the books from Amazon; I just want you to be able to read summaries and reviews. You may be able to get them through the library (either W&L's or your local library).

• Programming Pearls - how to approach solving problems
• The Art of Unix Programming - for a history of OS and Unix programming and knowledge of useful tools
• In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives - about Google, to have something to aspire to
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - “looks at the surprising points of contact between the music of Bach, the artwork of Escher, and the mathematics of Gödel. It also looks at the prospects for computers and artificial intelligence (AI) for mimicking human thought. For the general reader and the computer techie alike, this book still sets a standard for thinking about the future of computers and their relation to the way we think.”
• New Turing Omnibus - “66 concise articles on the major points of interest in computer science theory, technology and applications”
• The Jargon File
• The Bastard Operator from Hell series
• The Cathedral & the Bazaar, the book on Safari - requires logging in with W&L account.
• Python Cookbook, Second edition - requires logging in with W&L account; you can definitely get elsewhere on paper
• The Design of Everyday Things
• The Art of Computer Programming, Vols 1-3, Vol 4
• The Art of Unit Testing by Osherove
• The Apollo Guidance Computer: Architecture and Operation by O'Brien.

• Paul Graham's essays
  • One recommended essay: Hackers and Painters
• Communications of the ACM - articles (and other media) on a variety of computer-science related topics
• Joel on Software
• Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering
• Lambda the Ultimate Blog - this page has pointers for early studiers of programming languages (PL); may get a little technical

• Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet
• Out of their minds: the lives and discoveries of 15 great computer scientists

What many computer scientists have read…

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

• Oxford's recommendations for background reading for undergraduates
• Free Tech Books - database for a lot of free online books, text books, and lecture notes

• This Developer's Life
• Donald Knuth's Computer Musings
• The Pirates of Silicon Valley - “it's great because it's like the movie The Social Network except older in that it is set in the emerging Microsoft era. Also, it's a movie, so it's fun”

• GeomLab – “introduce you to some of the most important ideas in computer programming in an interactive, visual way through a guided activity.” Starts out slow but moves quickly
• Alice - “Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing.”
• Scratch - “Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art – and share your creations on the web.”
• Turtle Java - “graphics programming environment designed to provide an enjoyable introduction to programming in Java syntax, together with fundamental concepts of computer science such as compilation and machine code.”