Interesting books

On this page I will keep track of interesting books I read, which might come in handy as a recommendation to other people who are searching for books to read.

  • Structure and Implementation of Computer Programs (free html):
    One of the best (and most known) introductory books to computer science. Also useful for people wanted to learn about scheme and interpreters in general.
  • The Art of the Metaobject Protocol (amazon):
    In 1997 talk[2] at OOPSLA, Alan Kay called it “the best book written in ten years,” but was dismayed that it was written in such a Lisp-centric fashion.[3]
  • Simply Logical (free pdf):
    Good and not too long book explaining logic programming in-depth using Prolog.
  • Virtual Machines (amazon):
    Great book to learn about both high-level language virtual machines and whole-system virtual machines. Great to learn about how languages and computers really work. Quite a long read though.
  • Programming Ruby (amazon):
    Chapter 24 describes its class-metaclass model. Pretty interesting to see that ruby has an extra meta-layer between the class and instance side of objects to end up with 5 layers. This in comparison with Smalltalk, where objects have essentially 4 layers.

Books that I haven’t read (fully) yet:

  • On Lisp (free pdf):
    Book about Lisp and metaprogramming Lisp.
  • Understanding Programming Languages (free pdf)
  • Innovation Happens Elsewhere (free html):
    Book about open-source in business. I haven’t read the book yet.
  • Patterns of Software (free pdf):
    I haven’t read the book yet.

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