Re:Book list for streetfighting computer scientists
by globular-toast on Sunday November 15, 2026 @09:09AM
(#50507051)
That Ousterhout book is really good. I read it over about two weeks on the shitter. Very succinct. My favourite is how he describes what makes a good module, namely a good module is deep and narrow (has a small API but packs non-trivial functionality), rather than wide and shallow (large API but doesn't really do much).
I love Knuth but have not yet added Literate Programming to my library. Have been hoping to find it used somewhere (along with Concrete Mathematics) but hasn't turned up yet.
Re:Book list for streetfighting computer scientists
by WillAdams on Sunday November 15, 2026 @10:07AM
(#50507438)
It's a great book (as is this entire series, and I'm not saying that just 'cause I found a typo and point of improvement in Digital Typography_ and got a Reward Check), but one can get the gist of it from:
http://literateprogramming.com/
and finding a suitable tool for your language of choice and doing a small project --- tangle/weave is such a basic concept that it's notorious for folks rolling their own --- heck, I was able to do it (w/ a bit of help: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/722886/how-to-write-... )
That said, I bought a second copy as a gift from Thriftbooks.com and it was a reasonable price.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/39996759-a-philosophy...
and: _Literate Programming_ Donald Ervin Knuth
https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/lp.html
Mostly because I view them as two sides of the same coin --- one shows how to design software, the other shows how to document and write the software which one has formally designed.
Walking around my house I found 95 books at first counting --- but I maintain two lists of directly focused on programming books (obviously incompleat):
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/21394355-william-adams... --- fair number of these I have not yet read, and because they touch on programs I'm not likely to be working with, probably won't, but are listed because I really believe in Literate Programming and want to foster/advocate for it where possible.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/21394355-william-adams... --- most of these are read, and as noted, this is badly incompleat (but may be affected by some of the books I counted being on other shelves such as "Typography")