Hard comp-fi reading list

Re:Hard comp-fi reading list by haasted on Monday September 30, 2019 @12:39PM (#21117176)

I would add another Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon

A collection of (mostly) spoiler-free quotes to emphasise my point: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon

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Re:Hard comp-fi reading list by eigenhombre on Monday September 30, 2019 @04:57PM (#21119599)

Cryptonomicon is on there now; hilariously, it's categorized as "short" in the title.....

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Re:Hard comp-fi reading list by ThinkBeat on Monday September 30, 2019 @07:37PM (#21120680)

Yeah "short" at 918 pages or so.

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Re:Hard comp-fi reading list by darkfire613 on Monday September 30, 2019 @01:35PM (#21117743)

If ever there was a book that was deeply foundational to the person I’ve grown up into, it was Cryptonomicon. I read it for the first time in middle school.

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Re:Hard comp-fi reading list by NCO2 on Monday September 30, 2019 @05:26PM (#21119808)

Same here!

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Re:Hard comp-fi reading list by dcra on Monday September 30, 2019 @03:13PM (#21118682)

The book that got me back into mathematics and computers, and led me into CS. Can't recommend it enough.

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Re:Hard comp-fi reading list by sramsay on Monday September 30, 2019 @01:21PM (#21117603)

I was surprised that wasn't on there. Seems to me more closely allied with the genre than Diamond Age.

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Re:Hard comp-fi reading list by entropicdrifter on Monday September 30, 2019 @02:05PM (#21118050)

To be fair, Diamond Age does have a solid section where one of the main characters learns all of the fundamentals of computer science, networking, and the foundations of crypto. Pretty good metaphors for absorbing the general concepts are in there.

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Re:Hard comp-fi reading list by Alex63 on Monday September 30, 2019 @02:48PM (#21118467)

Hear, hear! DA is my favorite; love the Turing machine castle.

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Re:Hard comp-fi reading list by MarcScott on Monday September 30, 2019 @02:38PM (#21118372)

Got to love it when the protagonist is an Emacs user.

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Re:Hard comp-fi reading list by bart_spoon on Monday September 30, 2019 @01:29PM (#21117688)

Yeah I’m surprised that isn’t on there, given it’s the “hardest” computer fiction of any of his books.

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