https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...

[1]https://www.nand2tetris.org/.

For computer architecture, Petzold's "Code" is wonderful.

One of my favorite books, it covers everything from braille to microprocessors. A great book for anyone interested in technology.

http://microsoftpress.oreilly.com/

I've heard (many times) that Code Complete is very good-- I'm strongly considering purchasing it.

[1] https://codepodcast.com/

All of Petzold's books are excellent, in particular; "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" should be read by everybody to understand how Computers really work.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...

https://www.codewars.com/

- Thinking fast, and slow

- 7 habits of highly effective people

- Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

- Getting Things Done

- Choose Yourself

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
by Charles Petzold

https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...

Best of luck with your cruise conference!

Strange Loop has a page with a four year backlog of talks, many of which are pretty good.

http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/

Code by Charles Petzold, The Elements of Computing (Nand2Tetris course book), No Starch Press's Secret Life of Programs, Learning Computer Architecture with Raspberry Pi

link: https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...

    * Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)
    * Revolution OS (2001)
    * Code Rush (2000)
    * The KGB, the Computer and Me (1990)
    * Infinity (1996)
    * Antitrust (2001) -- mildly entertaining and fun

Edit: Fixed from "Code" to "The Code Book". Although "Code" (Charles Petzold), on a different subject, is also excellent.

Very good book indeed.

Not so much programming, but very good if you're interested in how your computer actually works.

https://github.com/codecombat/codecombat

It starts with sending signals using flashlights and follows the evolution of computers from the ground up (mostly hardware).

You can't possibly mean his "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" or "The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour through Alan Turing's Historic
Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine"? These books are great.

* Code Complete https://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Cons...

* Programming Pearls https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Pearls-2nd-Jon-Bentley/dp...

* Pragmatic Programmer https://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Maste...

- Code that most C books/courses would teach you how to write

- Portable C code (arguably portability is one of C's biggest successes!)

- Code that you'd expect to find in the K&R book

The idea of iterative software development - that we now call "agile" was first documented in 1957

The Mythical Man Month was published in 1975 and is just as relevant today as it was when it was written.

Code Complete came out in 1993 and is still relevant.

Even when you start talking about programming languages, both Java and C# have been popular in the enterprise since 2005.

Quantum Electrodynamics (Feynman): A summary of how almost EVERYTHING works (albeit explained simplistically).

Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger (great insights / worldly wisdom from one of the world’s greatest investors).

The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life

The Princeton Companion to Mathematics (Great overview of mathematics).

Quantum Mechanics: Concepts and Applications (Great QM book).

Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization (Great leadership / management insights).

Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (An extremely simplified historical overview of how we got here).

The Book of Disquiet (Serpent's Tail Classics) (Random journaling from one of the world’s greatest prose writers: Fernando Pessoa).

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software (Excellent explanation on how computers work from bottom -> top).

The Machinery of Life (Includes excellent visuals in biology).

The Character of Physical Law (Great insights in physics by Feynman).

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (Great book on business process improvement).

How to Win Friends & Influence People (Nothing groundbreaking, but still a worthy read).

Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming (Great info and insights from some of the greatest software developers of all time).

The Periodic Table (Great read and some of the greatest prose writing you’ll ever encounter).

Reading the book is the most beautiful and simple way that a person can really understand what a computer and come to the realization that it is not black magic.

https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Developer-Prac...

http://www.viddler.com/explore/coderush/videos/1/

This one's for you if you want to learn or just recap principles of computers (and read on evolution as well). I just started reading it and found it suprisingly easy to follow. It's perfect if you like things explained step-by-step and in a simple way.

It is genuinely one of the best books I have ever read.

Even for a technical reader it's still an enjoyable book. It inspired me to design and make a computer of my own.

It's a modern classic (2000). It's less technical and more about the history behind the idea/theories of coding itself. It also explains some basic principles of how computers work, at a high level. Very well written.

http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/ [1]

http://www.codeigniter.com/

In fact, I found the book very enjoyable. It gives a nice pedagogic twist on how information can processed with hardware.

It has been discussed on HN here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1936474

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JDMPOK2/

Takes you from simple mechanical switches all the way to a CPU.

* Tests - check

* Version control - check

* Code generation - check

* Decoupling, refactoring, metaprogramming, power editing.

It's still worth reading but it needs a second edition...

"Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software", by Charles Petzold

"Rework", by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

> It’s easy to read, you can lie down on the couch and enjoy it

No, it isn’t. It’s an awesome book. But it presents diagram after diagram of CPU internals and it would require a huge amount of stamina to get through them. You cannot just turn the pages; the entire point of the book is understanding how these components work in detail. It might be a good book to keep in a nuclear bunker to help rebuild civilization though.

Introduction to Information Retrieval http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/
This is a free digital book, very good so far.

The Manipulated Man by Esther Villar.

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold.

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus.

http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softwa...

You will learn everything from logic gates/transistors to software.

Charles Petzolds "CODE The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software"

http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/

Would help if you shared the end goal. Get hired anywhere? Get hired by Top 4 Tech Company or Hot Startup of the Year? Start a business? Don't get bored? How long is he going to be incarcerated?

I would greatly appreciate if you shared your experience.

Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine might be good for your friend.

http://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/03164...

Another good option might be Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold.

http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softwa...

Or, how about Coders at Work?

http://www.amazon.com/Coders-Work-Reflections-Craft-Programm...

Another one that I have (but haven't had time to read yet) is Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software by Scott Rosenberg. It might have something that your friend would find interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-Code-Programmers-Transcendent...

Another one that may be inspirational, although it's more about personalities than computer science per-se, would be Steven Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.

http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven-Lev...

Speaking of code, another excellent book along these lines is Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold.

http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/

It will all begin to make sense as you will have a thorough understanding of what is going on at the lowest level. You will never regret acquiring that knowledge.

From my understanding of the style I believe The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee is a similar take on genetics.

It stays fairly high level as it doesn't require a molecular biology degree, but Mukherjee gives a fantastic primer on many of the concepts in genetics in a deeply interesting and human fashion. It's always refreshing when non-fiction books manage to weave a narrative throughout in a way that feels natural.

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold
(http://amzn.com/B00JDMPOK2)

The 4-Hour Body - Tim Ferriss - Lot's of anecdotes from Ferriss' own experiments.

S. - by J.J. Abrams - Layers upon layers. Unlike anything I've read before and a true Abrams experience. Check it out if you haven't heard of it!

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software -
Charles Petzold - Fascinating PopSci book on the origins of Computers and Code. Each chapter seems to build on the knowledge you've built from previous chapters. Interesting read for the programmer/computer engineer and VERY approachable.

Having said that, I have no issues with electronic format of books (except they make my eyes hurt). Sitting at a computer reading a good book works just as well as reading a paper book. If you are that enticed by the web, unplug your ethernet cable.

On a side note, has anyone read "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" by the same author. I am halfway through it, and I think its a phenomenal book.

Which does a great job building up computing from bits all the way to a adders, CPUs, and assembly language (with the historical background around it too).

I think the easiest way to get an idea for Quantum Computing and what the difference is comes from watching a specific example, I thought this example of Shor's algorithm was pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUwZZaI5u0c

Code Complete is a problematic book. It has some good ideas but also has some very bad ones (cone of uncertainty, 10 times productivity in good programmers, etc).

Design Patterns is mostly obsolete. Functional programming techniques made a lot of Object Oriented techniques irrelevant (e.g.: observer pattern vs callbacks with lambdas).

Art of Computer Programming is the book everyone mentions but no one reads. A classic that people actually read is Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

My recommendations: "Code" by Charles Petzold,"Don't make me think" by Steve Krug, Working Effectivelly with Legacy Code, by Robert Feathers, Clean Code by uncle Bob,..

Java Concurrency in Practice (2006) is older but relevant and clearly describes concurrency on the JVM. A must read for any Java, Scala, Clojure, etc. software engineer; well-written, enjoyable, concise.

Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby by Sandi Metz is a fun read packed with good principles for working in Ruby that are applicable in general to object oriented programming.

Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns by Kent Beck is worth a read because the general principles are applicable to any OOP language.

Clean Code by Robert Martin is excellent but a time commitment. (If you had to pick between SICP and Clean Code because time is at a premium I'd err on the side of Clean Code for practicality. Writing maintainable code is paramount.)

The Joy of Clojure (Fogus/Houser) is excellent and mentally digestable even if you have no Lisp or Clojure background.

(http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/)

The Art of Electronics Lab Book has plans for building a computer and it's pretty well documented, although very old.

(http://www.amazon.co.uk/Laboratory-Manual-Electronics-Paul-H...)

Another good way to learn is to find a circuit diagram and run it by pencil. Just like people learn programming by writing code on paper and running the software with a pencil; writing the variables and such. Here's one (http://www.nathandumont.com/sites/nathandumont.com/files/ima...) (not a great example) but you try to work out what values you need where to get various bits working.

When you get a better circuit diagram you can create a memory map. Here's a link that describes what I mean. (http://www.clear.rice.edu/elec201/Book/hardware.html)

Good Luck!

http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softwa...

Even having understood for years how computers work in principal, nothing quite put it together for me like this book.

There's a similarly great book on the history/methods of cryptography called "The Code Book" by Simon Singh that I recommend too - http://www.amazon.com/The-Code-Book-Science-Cryptography/dp/...
It's great because it traces the history but also walks you through how the cyphers actually worked, and provides the best intros I've ever seen to public key and quantum cryptography.

1. https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...

It's one thing to say, I'd do it different. I'd have this book, or that book, or my list would have more this focus or that focus. It's a whole different beast to claim this list is "poor." And it is stupid to do so without countering with a list of exactly 5 books. Yes stupid.

I have read all 5 books. All 5 are excellent books. All 5 are very highly regarded in the field of programming and computer science. The descriptions that are attached to the list in TFA are accurate and useful to anyone reading the list. If there's a book on that list you haven't read, I'd say read it. This list simply isn't in the same postcode as "poor" and the descriptions of it as poor can't back it up in a meaningful way. Maybe there's another reason why the general mood of this thread is hypercritical? Smells a bit though, don't it? Do you really think if Guttag submitted that list the tone here would be the same or would the whole "this book is better" comments be rather more respectful of the original list and author? I've stated my opinion and why. You may of course, disagree.

Here's mine, Petzold "Code", Kernighan and Pike's "Practise of Programming", "The Pragmatic Programmer", Abelson and Sussman "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (with video lectures on youtube), Richard Stevens "Unix Network Programming" or maybe "Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment" - Which betray my OS accent. I'm not sure it's better than Ana Bell's. You can decide for yourself on that point.

compare books like CODE, SICP, and related books discussed below, to books like Beautiful Code, Higher Order Perl, Mythical Man Month, Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, tons of whitepapers.

do I really need to read CODE? Seems like a bottom-of-stack book that will never quite make it to the top.

----

The the government's claims of transparency and audibility of the NSA's PRISM program is analogous (if not directly related) to the claims of Palantir's. Search for "immutable auditing" below:

http://www.palantir.com/wp-content/static/pg-analysis-blog/2...

But even with such an audit trail to the core, it is known that it isn't sufficient:

http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~accorsi/papers/imf09....

I wager that for any given system that touts immutable audibility, there is a way to hack around it. Privacy through automated means is impossible. At best it is a kind of DRM that the NSA can easily work around secretly if it wanted it. What we should be advocating instead is Perfect Forward Secrecy in our internet architecture, and the dismantling of PRISM and related data centers.

Prof Lessig, in your book "Code", you are using the issue of copyright to condone the current direction of the surveillance state and offering red herrings as "balancing" compromises. Such a balance is impossible in the face of concentrated storage of (even encrypted) storage data by intelligence agencies. As long as the NSA can tap the wires and record information in vast databases for cold storage, we are absolutely in risk.

More technical discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5966942

P.S., FTFY: "I have not, AND would not ever, accept money from Palantir..."

One of the things that initially bugged me with lots of functional programming was that it broke many of the Code Complete rules like having one operation per line.

Does this mean that Code Complete is not relevant for functional code or maybe there is a new edition required I"m not sure.

My kids enjoyed this book, similar topic, but fairly playful in how it was put together and an extremely gentle introduction without actually shying away from how things actually work. It's hard to imagine a reader not coming away with a much better understanding of what computing is all about. It starts at gates and works up to actual (machine) code at the end of the book. Very good diagrams throughout.

Despite being from 2000, I don't think it's become outdated. I'd love it if there was a sequel that covered putting things together with a cheap FPGA.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softwa...

I think Code by Petzold is decent in that it's a book you can read in bed etc. but it spends a long time discussing mechanical relays as an analogue and later discusses various processors in depth.

I think Nand2Tetris is slightly better in that it focuses on what I'd consider to be the most important stuff, but it's an actual course and requires significantly more effort.

Nand2Tetris is probably the best course I've ever done though, including my university studies in Physics and ML. It's fun and you learn loads.

At the beginning of this year, after trying to explore what I wanted to do for the next stage in my life, I decided to get back into the profession as a solo practitioner and transition away from software development. I'm officially back to practice, and I'm surprisingly happy with my professional life - something I never thought would really be possible.

If you're a practicing lawyer who wants to give yourself an edge as a lawyer, I think it's more important to understand the concepts and principles as opposed inventing or finding the barely existent job of coder/lawyer for a firm - I don't know the name of the role, and I've seen it touted by legal tech folks - but these are elusive. Understanding what's possible, I believe, is by far way more important. For example, I've worked with countless non-coding project/product managers, and they've been great contributors to the process in software development.

My recommendation for lawyers? Do the Python track on Codecademy over a summer and read Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software.

https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Developer-Prac...

2. Learn C.

3. Learn whatever interests you next.

https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Developer-Prac...

Code by Charles Petzold

Artificial Life - Steven Levy

Time Reborn - Lee Smolin

The Singularity is Near - Ray Kurzweil

Surfaces and Essences - Douglas Hofstadter

How to Measure Anything - Douglas Hubbard

-- One of my favorites is How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenbreg

I have that on my list of "to read real soon now". Sounds fascinating.

Working Effectively with Legacy Code was also impressive, I think I just read it too early before I was good enough to really understand and use it.

TDD is also worth reading (and it’s short) to get a sense of tests if like me, it’s something you’d never really done before when learning.

If you like soul of a new machine, you’d probably like Halt and Catch Fire on Netflix. I’d also recommend the Phoenix project and the dev ops handbook.

Code by Charles Petzold is one of my favorites to recommend, something every CS student should read.

I’ll have to check out the others on this list too.

A great book that explains how computers actually work through number systems and the logic that acts on those systems. You start with the theory behind binary numbers and work your way through electrical circuits, logic gates, RAM, transistors, and the operating system as you build your fundamental knowledge of the inner workings of computers. It's pretty cool.

  * The Reckoners #1/#2
  * Stormlight Archive #1/#2
  * Mistborn #1/#2/#3
  * Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures As the World's Most Wanted Hacker

  * How to Win Friends and Influence People
  * Malazon Book #1
  * The Forever War
  * The Martian

  * Think and Grow Rich
  * Watership Down
  * Rainbows End
  * Snow Crash
  * What is Zen
  * Wool: Silo
  * Founders at Work
  * Light Bringer
  * Hyperion
  * The War of Art
  * Atlas Shrugged
  * The Demon Haunted World
  * Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
  * Joe Abercrombie's books
  * Rich Dad Poor Dad
  * Founders at Work
  * Fear the Sky
  * Daemon -- EDIT ADDED

  * All of Brandon Sanderson's Books
  * The Kingkiller Chronicles
  * How to Win Friends and Influence People
  * Issac Asimov's short stories and Foundation series
  * The Forever War
  * Gentleman Bastards
  * Ready Player One
  * The Martian
  * A Wizard of Earthsea

  * http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

I use both Code and TECS books together. It is an incredibly effective class. I've found many students in CS curricula "drift" through the topics without really grasping anything, only to graduate feeling they haven't really learned much.

This material takes the essence of numerous CS topics and educates the reader by doing and building, rather than only reading and theorizing.

If you are a developer and don't know what happens when you execute a program, you really need this book (and CODE by Petzold).

It is a great book written by one of the great computer scientists of our time. It tracks the evolution of code and computing from morse code and braille on to number systems, early processors and even into how processors handle this information. When I hire someone for nearly any position, I buy them this book.

*Don't let the title fool you, this is not some discussion about high level languages, this is the down and dirty stuff.

http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softwa...

I would also recommend the book "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" by Charles Petzold as a general introduction.

It starts with an abacus and 400 pages later of flip-flops, memory gates, and microprocessors it leaves you with a fully built modern computer.

That said, I would not put it in a beginner category. I read it after 4 years of ASM programming and building electrical gadgets and I still had to stop and reread chapters quite a few times until I got all the concepts out of it.

If you're at all interested in how all the parts in your computer interact and work together at the lowest level, READ THIS BOOK.

"Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" by Charles Petzold.

http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softwa...

Being a CS major, I bought this book for the sheer amazement at how the gist of everything I had learned about computers in the university could be conveyed in one book in such easy and fun manner. The learning curve is so gentle, it just couldn't be easier. I cannot recommend this book enough to _every_ person who really wants to understand how computers work.

1. http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softwa...

PS If you need a bit more beautiful simplicity go and read about NAND logic and realize that they are all you're ever going to need.

A wonderful demonstration of how this can be done can be found in the "The Elements of Computing Systems". Homepage: http://www1.idc.ac.il/tecs/

This course will show you how to build a simple but modern computer stack starting with nothing but simple NAND gates. Make sure to do the exercises and be prepared to invest a lot of time if you buy this book, otherwise you'll just waste your time.

I consider TECS and Charles Petzold's "Code" to be the most approachable books for those who want to understand what's really happening "under the hood" of your computer and can't recommend them highly enough.

The idea is that when first creating a method or function, you write out in comments what you're going to do in a 'why' level (eg, 'keep track of resources') rather than a 'how' level (eg, 'increase cntFooBar by 1').

You then start 'filling out' the code to do what you 'designed' via the comments. Hopefully you end up with a better designed routine, and you get free comments to boot as they now explain what the code is doing.

When I first read Code Complete as an impressionable teenager I tried it out and liked it, but I have since had a change of heart on this issue and other Code Complete wisdom. I rarely comment inside methods anymore.

On a side note, people keep recommending masters of doom to me, I definitely need to check it out myself.

(http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/)

Or the Art of Electronics Student Manual, which goes through the process of building a computer.

(http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Art-Electronics-Student-Manual/d...)

One thing that really helped me was getting a circuit diagram for a simple 8 bit computer, and then creating a memory map by tracing the address lines and writing what numbers were needed to enable addressing or not. Uh, I've done a really poor job of explaining this. Wikipedia does slightly better - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory-mapped_I/O) but there must be something even better than that.

These slides have the limitation of being slides, but they seem (at first glance) to be pretty good.

(http://research.cs.tamu.edu/prism/lectures/mbsd/mbsd_l16.pdf)

Whenever I read the mailing list, or threads related to it, I don't understand 99% of the stuff. Do I need to know C _very well_? Do I need to be familiar with kernel? If so, how do I go about doing that? At the moment I'm reading "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software".

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

I just love this book! It was a joyous adventure of discovery the first time through. Subsequent reads always yield new insights.

1. Mastering the Compex Sale, by Jeff Thull. If you're interested in B2B selling, I highly recommend this book. Thull's approach is dramatically different from the old-school "Alec Baldwin rant in Glengarry Glen-Ross" stuff you may have been exposed to. He encourages a model where you act more like a doctor, or a detective, and practice "Always Be Leaving" instead of "Always Be Closing".

2. It's Not The Big That Eat The Small, It's The Fast That Eat The Slow by Jason Jennings. The title is a good summary. Jennings makes an argument for the importance of "speed" as the primary driver of competitive advantage. There's more too it that that, so just read the book.

3. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold. If you didn't take, or have forgotten, classes like Computer Architecture or Digital Logic, this is a great book for getting your head around the low level details of what's happening in side a digital computer. Petzold starts from VERY basic examples (using a flaslight to morse code messages to your friend across the street) and slowly builds up to a full-fledged (if somewhat minimalistic) CPU.

Edit: some unlucky soul commented Atlas Shrugged and got downvoted / flagged / whatever to death. I didn't read AS in 2016, but I have read it, and I do recommend it to everyone. It has its issues, but it's absolutely a book everyone should read, whether you agree with Rand's ideology or not. And if you aren't familiar enough to Rand's ideology to know if you agree or not,that's all the more reason to read Atlas Shrugged (or The Fountainhead).

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softwa...

Seven Concurrency Models in Seven Weeks - Paul Butcher

http://www.braveclojure.com/

I still had no idea how 10010011000110101001010 etc etc allowed me to play World of Warcraft. There was a small part of me that hoped beyond hope that computers were magic and there was some grand conspiracy going on to cover that fact.

Then I read CODE.

My hopes were shattered, but they were replaced by something much more treasured: Understanding.

As an example of its utility, I really like its description of formal systems which are a somewhat simplified version of context free grammars. There are many other concepts described in that book that give similar but more intuitive explanations of CS concepts that helped me understand them as part of "the bigger picture."

CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, which is mentioned on here a lot, was helpful for similar reasons.

Code by Charles Petzold.

Of the ones that I haven't finished, but have at least looked at, I think I'd say:

Machine Learning for Hackers by Drew Conway and John Myles White

and

The Master Algorithm by Pedro Domingos

Charles Petzold's "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" is also well regarded, but is aimed more at non-technical people.

- How to design programs (http://htdp.org)

- The Little/Seasoned/Reasoned Schemer.

- Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Petzold

- Coders at work by Peter Seibel

- The Pragmatic Programmer by Hunt and Thomas

- Code Complete by McConnell

For intermediate/experienced people:

- Structure and Interpretation of computer programs (http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html)

- Software Tools in Pascal by Kernighan and Plauger.

- Programming Pearls by Bentley

- Smalltalk 80: The Language and Its Implementation by Adele Goldberg.

- Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming by Norvig

- A Discipline of Programming by Dijkstra

While I've ommited some important language specific books, and ignored essential areas (algorithms, discrete math, hw arquitecture), I think this is a good starting point.

http://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/03164...

Stealing The Network: How to Own the Box. This is a collection of fictional accounts of "hacking" written by hackers. Real world techniques are described though its in lightweight detail, the aim of the book is more to give an insight into how an attacker thinks. It's quite an enjoyable read too.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stealing-Network-How-Own-Cyber-Ficti...

Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground by Kevin Poulsen. This one's a true story.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingpin-Hacker-Billion-Dollar-Cyberc...

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software By Charles Petzold. I still have to read this one, but I expect it would fit in with what you're after quite well.

http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softwa...

The humour is subversive, the illustration is lovely, and these ("This is not my hat" is another) are great books for younger children. My child loved it, and the people I've given this to have gone on to buy other books by the writer or illustrator.

"Mr Birdsnest and the House Next Door": https://www.amazon.co.uk/Birdsnest-House-Next-Door-Little/dp...

Little Gems are a set of books printed on reduced contrast paper, with a large clear font. They're short, simple, but fun. They're good for younger readers or for slightly older reluctant readers. My child enjoyed reading this book, and loved the illustration. The other child I gave this to took out other books in the Little Gems series from the library, and bought other Julia Donaldson books with her pocket money.

"Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Sof... I had a friend who knew a lot about the software, and knew a lot about hardware but their hardware knowledge was a bit patchy. Code helped solidify their knowledge. If I could have afforded it I would have given them The Art of Electronics and the companion Student Manual. (This was in the 1990s. I haven't read the new version and I don't know how well it works today.)

"Bomber Command" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bomber-Command-Pan-Military-Classic... I liked this book because it describes how we (the UK) went into world war 2 with ethical notions around not bombing civilian populations and ended up fire-bombing several heavily populated German cities. It's also eye-opening about the scale of this part of the war, and the cost in lives of aircrew.

While they haven't given me any expertise on how to actually use these technologies to solve intricate problems (only experience and true depth can do that), they have given me a near-complete picture of what ordinary computers do today. Nothing is magic. Everything is a logical operation.

I only regret I hadn't read these back when I was a teenager.

PS. Next thing I would like to learn is the general design of modern CPUs and branch prediction.

I think the format is perfect because of several factors:

1. for books I read through once and never actively reference again, or very seldomly

2. I don't have to wait for the paperback to come out

3. I don't have the eye strain of reading on an ipad or my phone

4. For a large majority of my purchases it doesn't make sense to own a physical copy of the book. It seems like it would be a hassle to own and carry and take up space. (also see #2)

5. a kindle is light and cheap enough that I don't have to stress too much about breaking it or leaving it somewhere or it being conspicuous to have out in public

However, the kindle fails at some important things:
It's not in color, so it doesn't do well for books that are image heavy (even in black and white) - the display is a little too small and any images in the book tend to look terrible for some reason (even though the supposed dpi is relatively high) -which brings me to your point, that in general I find that phones, tablets and kindles are not particularly good at replicating the browsing experience of a certain kind of book.

I don't think all books fall into this category, but some important ones do and I can't imagine not having a physical copy for that reason.

The last one that comes to mind for me is Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software. I like browsing through all of his examples and diagrams and flipping back and forth through the different parts that interrelate to each other.

I've never found an electronic browsing experience that was as good as a physical book. (unless I was at the point of wanting to implement some formal system of organizing and linking my ideas, in which case I think a computer would be preferable)

The kindle particularly fails at this experience, as an integrated piece of hardware / software it's merely competent and has a lot of rough edges. It's not as seamlessly integrated in the way iphones (for example) are.

For a gentle overview of how digital logic and CPUs work, Charles Petzold's book "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" is solid introduction. Nisan and Schocken's textbook "The Elements of Computing Systems" and the lessons at the NAND2Tetris site (https://www.nand2tetris.org/) are good if they want to get hands on with the subject.

There are a variety of robotics and electronics interfacing kits based off the Arduino and Raspberry Pi available through Adafruit and SparkFun. If they're more interested in the digital logic side, Digilent provides FPGA boards and test instruments intended for use in educational environments that also include tutorials https://store.digilentinc.com/the-zynq-book-tutorials-for-zy....

[EDIT] I've seen some recommendations for the video game Factorio in this thread and, odd as it may sound, it would not be a bad gauge of interest. Digital logic is all about getting the right signals to the right place at the right time and doing the right thing with them and Factorio definitely teaches analogues of that.

[EDIT 2] Another interesting project for them might be to build a computer from chips. Ben Eater has a design, tutorials, and sells kits for building a 6502 computer (Same CPU as the Apple II) on a breadboard: https://eater.net/6502. (Not sure I'd want to try that without a 5V tolerant logic analyzer but they're cheaply available nowadays, e.g. https://www.seeedstudio.com/Logic-Pirate-p-1750.html) Note that I don't vouch for any of these, they're just examples of what's available out there that your friend can investigate if it piques their interest.

http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softwa...

> Extant histories of the internet favor either heroic or deterministic narratives. On the determinist side, we have Paul Edwards’s The Closed World (1996), Fred Turner’s Democratic Surround (2013) and From Counterculture to Cyberculture (2006), John Markoff’s What the Dormouse Said (2006), and others that describe the internet as the result of collisions between large-scale Cold War policies or zeitgeists. With some variations, these narratives portray the digital revolution as born from the improbable marriage of countercultural hippie experiments and the military-industrial complex.

> On the heroic, individualist side, we have Steven Levy’s Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (1984), Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon’s Where Wizards Stay Up Late (1996), Michael Hiltzik’s Dealers of Lightning (1999), Walter Isaacson’s Innovators (2014) and Steve Jobs (2011), Leslie Berlin’s Troublemakers (2017), and Adam Fischer’s Valley of Genius (2018), whose titles speak for themselves. Histories in this genre extoll the whimsical personalities and talents of digital entrepreneurs and inventors, of whom Jobs is the prime exemplar. Some do acknowledge the contingencies that facilitated the rise of these digital “geniuses.” But overall, they tend to represent Silicon Valley as a titanic battleground that proved the superior mettle of its winners. Both extremes are tempting in their clarity; both make for a gripping story. Occasionally—as in Liza Mundy’s Code Girls (2017) or Margot Shetterly’s Hidden Figures (2016)—a simultaneously individualist and Marxist approach unveils underappreciated digital counter-heroes.

Yes. Get a breadboard and powersupply and some jumper leads and some LEDs and start building stuff.

Then get some books; Code (the petzold book) and Art of Electronics are both good examples to start really building stuff, and understanding what's going on.

When you've got beyond the initial introduction you want to start using an oscilloscope to start seeing things like leading edge or falling edge, and measuring the times, and seeing how timing issues come in to play when you have a long chain of slow logic gates.

Fun (as in puzzles and stuff) things to do include building one type of logic gate using a different set of gates; use Karnaugh maps etc.

This is a really good way to get used to logic states and timing and using a scope to trace a signal path and compare what you're getting with what you think you should be getting.

Don't forget with real world builds to include de-coupling capacitors.

I was taught to create a memory map from a circuit diagram, which I guess is handy if you're into that kind of low level stuff. (Probably embedded stuff now.)

EDIT: Thanks to Shabble for the correction!

Neat!

I just figured that you could redesign common ICs so that they had a new wire akin to the "carry" bit. I called it the 'done' wire, and I figured you could just tie it to the CLK of the next IC. Ya know? So 'doneness' would propagate across the surface of the motherboard (or SoC) in different ways depending on the operation it was performing. Rather than the CLK signal, which is broadcast to all points...

(I know that my idea is half baked and my description is worse. I'm glad I found this PDF!)

I knew the big advantage would be power savings. I called the idea 'slow computing', and I envisioned an 8-bit style machine that would run on solar or a hand crank and be able to pause mid calculation until enough power was available... Just like a old capacitor-based flash camera will be able to flash more frequently when you have fresh batteries in it.

You'd just wire the power system up with the logic. Suppose an adder fires a "done" at some other IC. Now, put your power system inline, like MiTM... When it gets the "done", it charges that capacitor (a very small one? :) ) and only when enough power is available does it propagate the "done". ...Maybe the "done" powers the next IC. I dunno.

As I said, half baked. Glad to find out that I'm not the only one that dreamed of 'clockless', though!

SICP: "We are about to study the idea of a computational process. Computational processes are abstract beings that inhabit computers. As they evolve, processes manipulate other abstract things called data. The evolution of a process is directed by a pattern of rules called a program. People create programs to direct processes. In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells."

Code: "You're 10 years old. Your best friend lives across the street. In fact, the windows of your bedrooms face each other. Every night, after your parents have declared bedtime at the usual indecently early hour, you still need to exchange thoughts, observations, secrets, gossip, jokes, and dreams. No one can blame you. After all, the impulse to communicate is one of the most human of traits."

Also had a strange case of loaning out C# 4.0 in a Nutshell and never getting it back, but I would do it again (with an updated version). Albahari is good at writing a reference without being too boring, and C# has some legitimately interesting sides in how it does some things, like it's dynamically compiled regexen.

I'm not really sure I buy the idea that any of these fears would be substantial enough to impact the allocation of time on programming unless the person in question had some issues to work out such as procrastination.

Afraid of what others will say? Don't tell them. The practice is still going to be worthwhile.

Afraid of not finishing? Break down the project into small chunks, write tests to make sure the small chunks work properly, and iterate between planning out the next steps and executing the next step in the queue (in theory, any number of subsequent steps can be added, removed, deleted, or re-arranged after executing any single step).

Afraid you won't know how to solve a problem? Which problem? Did you read the Wikipedia article and consult the relevant textbooks?

Afraid you're not working on the right thing? First figure out what the right thing is, and justify why it is right. If you're working on anything else, stop. Now start planning how to approach the right thing. You are now working on the right thing, for a discussion on when to transition to coding, see Code Complete.

Here's what I've backed, and how they've turned out:

Successful

* Sunski Sunglasses - A resounding success. Just got my pair today, and the item was exactly as described. The glasses, packaging, and design is all top-notch

* Wear You Live - A local company (for me at least) that used the money to purchase the initial equipment. I received all items promptly and on schedule.

* Cowboy Comb - Not as ambitious (they just wanted enough interest to make producing the combs profitable) but I got my item quickly and exactly as described.

* Freaker USA - Upgraded coozies. Another project that is putting people in my area to work, plus the updates were hilarious. I got my items exactly as described and on time.

* The Jay DeMerrit Story - Used the Kickstarter campaign to build buzz and raise funds for additional footage. Ended up getting the film a few months later.

Pending

* Castle Story - A Minecraft-esque strategy game. They've released alpha, and while I haven't played it, they've been really good about updating me and I think they're actually going to ship this game...eventually.

* Fight for Space - A movie currently in production, but they seem to be making solid headway. I honestly have no idea how this one is going to turn out.

* Code Hero - This is the one all the buzz has been about recently, but apparently they've been actually making progress.

Also, I read something like Code Complete for the same reason I've read the parent blog. Even though I feel like I know the basic points here, writing good code inevitably is a trade-off and so one more idea of how to make the trade-off is useful.

Here are some books I've given as gifts recently:

* The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm, Lewis Dartnell[1]

* The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb[2]

* Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse[3]

* The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris and Steven Hayes[4]

* Code, Charles Petzold[5]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Rebuild-Civilization-Afterm...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness-Frag...

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Siddhartha-Hermann-Hesse/dp/161382378...

[4] https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Trap-Struggling-Start-Livin...

[5] https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold

What Is Relativity?: An Intuitive Introduction to Einstein's Ideas, and Why They Matter by Jeffrey O. Bennett

Spooky Action at a Distance: The Phenomenon That Reimagines Space and Time—and What It Means for Black Holes, the Big Bang, and Theories of Everything by George Musser

Towers of Midnight (Wheel of Time, #13) by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson

Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Just started reading The Penguin History Of The World by J.M. Roberts & Odd Arne Westad. I'd always found history interesting in a general sense, but other than a couple of specific periods that I found interesting (the American Revolution, WWI, WWII), I had not studied the subject in much depth. So I figured I'd start with a good single-volume overview of World History as a whole, then go back and dig deeper into additional areas that pique my interest.

So far it's pretty fascinating. It's especially interesting when you see how elements of our modern world have roots that can be traced back for millennia. It's also fun to note the extent to which geography and climate have impacted the evolution of human civilization(s). It gives you a lot to think about in terms of dealing with anthropogenic climate change. Even if human civilization isn't wiped out completely, we could certainly see massive changes in the nature of our civilizations as a result. At least history seems to suggest so.

Depending on the amount of time remaining I would either go into more depth or point him towards "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" by Charles Petzold (http://amzn.com/0735611319)

A good primer on the history of CS is probably Code, The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, by Charles Pretzold. I've put together some notes on it here: http://alvaroduran.com/code.

Any feedback is much appreciated!

https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/hello_from_a_libc_fre...

http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.htm...

http://timelessname.com/elfbin/

A wee bit heavy, but it's comprehensive. It deals with what happens when you run code, how the architecture of the computer works (by and large) including at the logic level:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Computer-Systems-Programmers-Randal-...

If you want to go lower (and higher).. look at Understanding the Linux kernel for a good understanding of how an OS is put together, with specific examples i.e. Linux.

Code, by Petzold, deals with logic and computers from the ground up. It starts with relays and builds them up into gates and usable arithmetic blocks.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Soft...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Understanding-Linux-Kernel-Daniel-Bo...

The physics is fairly simple, at least from a CRT or LED display perspective. Gets more tricky dealing with interconnecting microprocessors because a good chunk is vendor specific.

I think this kind of project is well suited to a guide on how to build a computer from the ground up, starting with logic gates, writing a real time OS and developing a scripting language that will run and compile on it. Then you can skip a lot of largely extraneous stuff and have a solid understanding of how the hardware works.

6.00x (MIT's edX Intro to CS course), Python
https://www.edx.org/courses/MITx/6.00x/2012_Fall/info

CS101 (Udacity's Intro to CS course), Python
http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs101/CourseRev/apr20...

Python the Hard way (Zed Shaw's online book), Python
http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/

Code Academy, (Python track), Python
http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/python

I consider 6.00x and CS101 to be my CS foundation and Python Hard way and Code Academy to be brush-up on the Python/programming. Working through all these in tandem really hits my brain in 4 different but complementary angles.

I'd go with "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" or a Donald Knuth book.

It starts off with a story of two kids communicating to each other with flashlights in Morse code, and slowly builds up into how a computer works.

I read for escapism, or to explore other worlds in my imagination. Reading gives me something fantastical to think about. If I want something real to think about I use the internet. Books have never filled that role, and I've never really considered them for it. Am I missing out? Should I try and shake my prejudice against non-fiction?

[1]: Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

This is one of the reasons I barely recommend any intro articles in Lean Notes (http://www.leannotes.com/): almost every single one is just a stream of incomplete and incorrect statements about how the world works, based on the author's myopic personal experiences.

Rather than properly generalizing and consolidating what needs to be said to convey a full understanding of the topic, most intros settle for the first example they can think of that could be remotely construed as related to the words they've previously used for whatever subject, regardless of whether it has meaning in any context. (Example: saying that type safety prevents you from trying to "multiply seven by cats".)

It seems like a pretty Dunning-Kruger thing: the less broad your knowledge is, the more justified you feel in writing an introductory text to the field.

The only time I've ever seen somebody actually qualified to write an introductory text actually doing so (as I can immediately recall) is Charles Petzold's [Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software][Code] (although I suspect, from the few excerpts of it I've seen, that Brian Kernighan's "D is for Digital" is good, too).

[Code]: http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softwa...

1. Neuromancer - William Gibson

2. Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson

3. Hackers - Heroes of the Computer Revolution - Steven Levy

4. How to Measure Anything - Douglas Hubbard

5. Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter

6. The Pragmatic Programmer - Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas

7. The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder

8. Code - Charles Petzold

9. The Shockwave Rider - John Brunner

10. Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become
Book - Peter Morville

11. Don't Make Me Think - Steve Krug

12. The Design of Everyday Things - Donald A. Norman

13. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering - Fred Brooks

14. Decline and Fall of the American Programmer - Ed Yourdon

15. Cube Farm - Bill Blunden

16. The Philip K. Dick Reader

17. The Cuckoo's Egg - Clifford Stoll

18. The Prince - Niccolò Machiavelli

19. The 48 Laws of Power - Robert Greene

20. The Atrocity Archives - Charles Stross

21. Business @ the Speed of Thought: Using a Digital Nervous System - Bill Gates

There's a bit of crossover insofar as Code uses relays to build an understanding of how digital logic works and has a few brief historical asides. Likewise The Switch provides a few brief technical explanations to help the non-expert reader along. But in general The Switch will not tell you much about how computers work and Code will not tell you much about where they came from.

Also check out ACM Competitive Programming problems [0]. They're small projects, usually centered around logic, mathematical calculations, and data processing.
If you want a challenge, take one year's problems and try to complete all eight in under five hours without an internet connection (physical reference material allowed).

[0] https://icpc.baylor.edu/worldfinals/problems

- Code (Charles Petzold)

- Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual (John Z. Sonmez)

- Zero Bugs and Program Faster (Kate Thompson)

- Daemon (Daniel Suarez)

- Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions (Brian Christian)

- How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships (Leil Lowndes)

Some people I have spoken to say his method isn't for them but I've found it useful, even if I haven't implemented everything he suggests.

I'd also recommend "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" by Charles Petzold. It starts at simple circuits and builds up a picture of how computers work. It has really helped me get my mental models of what's going on inside a computer straightened out!

And yet. To a junior dev who asked me for advice on this stuff today, I’d just say read Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, and if you like that then work through Nand to Tetris, and then go back to whatever you need for you day job.

In the book [CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Softwar](https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...), Charles Petzold talks about how it's foundational to the eventual invention of the computer.

Back then, it also meant coast to coast communications were almost instantaneous. And soon after, transatlantic cable-enabled telegraph boosted commerce between America and Europe.

I started with Elements of Computing: creating a half-adder and then a full-adder chip. But, I couldn't understand how I reached my solution—I was relying on my intuition. Then, I started reading "Code", which takes the reader on a journey from shining flash lights to communicate with your neighbor, all the way to bridging the gap between boolean algebra and building a relay.