Valuable Technical Books

Introduction

Below is a list of books, on technical subjects. Mostly computer science or software engineering, but also some math books. I've tried to stick to books that I've read and feel comfortable recommending, but I've also included books for which the recommendations I've heard from others are overwhelmingly positive. The list of books includes some text books I had in college, and some I wish I had; to some extent I regard this list as helping me complete my education. It also covers subjects that I wish were taught in college, but generally are not.

Bias in Evaluating Books

I can not hope to fully explain my biases, but I can still list a few, to prepare you. I actually recieved my B.S. in Mathematics, and I am left with an affection for theory. I am also comfortable with more theoretical books that present theorems, proofs, and use strange symbols to convey their meaning. I favor Unix as an operating system and development environment. I like Lisp, and really think it's a valuable learning tool.

Another thing to consider in looking at this list is that I don't read many of these books cover-to-cover. Doing that with technical books is hard, at least for me. Instead, I tend to browse through them the way a cow grazes in a pasture - and indeed I approach completion of each book over time. However, it does mean that even books I recommend strongly, I may not completely know. There may be something so heinous in some section I haven't read, that reading it would change my recommendation forever. But it's a free list.

To some extent, I've tried to avoid books that are simply good for learning a particular programming language. Yes, there are books on Scheme, Common LISP, C, and C++ in the list below, but that has more to do with what they convey while discussing a particular language. Books that I feel go deeper, and teach me something important through the language, are the exception to the rule.

Organization

I've tried to organize the list, but I'm not certain what the best form of organization is, for a list such as this. Because free books area easier to acquire, one section is devoted entirely to them. Because I can't recommend books I haven't even cracked open as strongly as books I have, books that I plan on reading – or that others have instructed me to read – get their own section.

Free books, available for download:
- Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesmal Approach: haven't read much of it, but I'd like to go through it some day because I never liked any of the textbooks I learned calculus from). This book is out of print.
- Linear Algebra: again, a textbook I hated in college. Paging through this on just a few subjects convinced me it's the best LinAl textbook I've ever seen. This book was never published by a major publisher, and was intended from the beginning to be cheap and easy to acquire.
- Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation: the book I learned Lisp from, I think it works as an introduction to programming as well. This book is out of print.
- On Lisp: what I read of it was interesting, but without much in the way of exerices or projects where I can apply what I thought I learned, I didn't get very far. This book is out of print.
- Practical Common Lisp: it looks like a good bridge between A Gentle Introduction and On Lisp. This book is still in print, and you can get it in Barnes & Noble.
- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs: an introductory Lisp textbook that focuses on Scheme rather than Common Lisp, and like A Gentle Introduction tries to be a fairly general introductory programming book. This book is still in print.
Books I've read enough to recommend:
- Design Patterns: I've actually become somewhat disenchanted with this book over the years. Perhaps it's the Singleton pattern, or all the verbose, accidentally-obfuscated pattern implementations I've seen over the years, but it's probably going to lose its place soon. Live and learn.
- The Practice of Programming: "Before the Pragmatic Programmer came along, this held pride of place. It's more technical than the Pragmatic Programmer, with code samples." I am very pleased having read this book, but it is also oriented more toward the computer science student than the professional programmer.
- Real-Time Rendering: a mathful book on three dimensional rendering, something that suits me much better than books on OpenGL or Direct3D particularly. It helped set me straight on how to think about several problems I had in developing 3D pong, and it will continue to be valuable (although I suspect my time in the game industry will mostly involve server software).
- Data Structures & Their Algorithms: another book for a course I took in college, but was dissatisfied. This covers many more kinds of data structures (and concerns about data structures), and in more depth, but it's a long book.
- Debugging Applications for Microsoft® .NET and Microsoft Windows®: a book specific to debugging, with lots of information relevant to Windows. If you have a Windows development environment handy while reading the book, it's good practice, but a great deal of the book is broadly applicable.
- Windows System Programming (aka Win32 System Programming): I have the second edition of this book. It covers in detail the Windows APIs for system programming, managing processes and files and IPC and the like (including sockets, threads, synchronization, etc.). This helped me get up to speed on Windows server programming.
- Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment: the book for UNIX systems programming. I feel kind of bad for finally reading this book after Windows System Programming above, but honestly they complement each other really well.
- UNIX Network Programming, Volume 1: easy to read, thorough coverage, and lots of key insights. If you're writing networking software, chances are you should read this book regardless of what platform you're writing it on.
- The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System: not a generic operating systems book, but I still learned quite a bit.
- UNIX® System Administration Handbook: truly, the bible of systems administration.
- Effective C++: reading this felt like a fast-forward through many of the C++ classes (or classes wherein I would write a lot of C++) that I didn't take. I'd recommend it to anyone writing C++.
- Perl Best Practices: I have heard a joke regarding the sad reality that the sometimes bizarre recommendations in this book really are the best practices of Perl. That is, that this book helps you make the best of a bad situation. It's also an excellent book for taking the approach that best practices can very much be a language-specific problem.
- The Art of SQL: this is the database book I want to recommend to budding database programmers. It covers both database design and query design, and in particular provides quite a bit of detail on how to design your database to match your queries (and vice versa, as few have the luxury of designing everything in their database environment).
Books I intend to read:
- The Mythical Man-Month: one of the most-recommended books on project management, yeah I'm going to read it eventually.
- Code Complete: one of the most-recommended books on software design, up there with Design Patterns.
- The Pragmatic Programmer: "At this point, the single most influential programmer book I've read. It's a meta programming book. Not much is spent on specific APIs or languages. It's more about what to do than how to do it."
- Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code: "It's all about how you can fix the design of your code without breaking it. The antidote for having to delete it all and re-write from scratch."
- More Effective C++ and Effective STL, two books in the same vein (and by the same author) as Effective C++.
- SQL Tuning, a workbook that purports to cover more deeply the magic of analytically optimizing SQL queries. It comes highly recommended, as well.
- Exceptional C++, a book purported to provide great insight into C++ exception handling, in a riddle/solution format.

Valuable Technical Books

Introduction

Bias in Evaluating Books

Organization

The List