Ask HN: What's the best computer science book you've read recently?
I&#x27;ll give you a couple. Note that some of these are rehashes of my earlier comments.<p># Elements of Programming<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Elements-Programming-Alexander-Stepanov&#x2F;dp&#x2F;032163537X&#x2F;ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=akhn-20&amp;linkId=c9a5aee4d1e5663b112138e6a6831e39" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Elements-Programming-Alexander-Stepan...</a><p>This book proposes how to write C++-ish code in a mathematical way that makes all your code terse.  In this talk, Sean Parent, at that time working on Adobe Photoshop, estimated that the PS codebase could be reduced from 3,000,000 LOC to 30,000 LOC (=100x!!) if they followed ideas from the book <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=4moyKUHApq4&amp;t=39m30s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=4moyKUHApq4&amp;t=39m30s</a><p>Another point of his is that the explosion of written code we are seeing isn&#x27;t sustainable and that so much of this code is algorithms or data structures with overlapping functionalities. As the codebases grow, and these functionalities diverge even further, pulling the reigns in on the chaos becomes gradually impossible.<p>Bjarne Stroustrup (aka the C++ OG) gave this book five stars on Amazon (in what is his one and only Amazon product review lol).<p>This style might become dominant because it&#x27;s only really possible in modern successors of C++ such as Swift or Rust, not so much in C++ itself.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;smile.amazon.com&#x2F;review&#x2F;R1MG7U1LR7FK6&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;smile.amazon.com&#x2F;review&#x2F;R1MG7U1LR7FK6&#x2F;</a><p># Grammar of graphics<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Grammar-Graphics-Statistics-Computing&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0387245448&#x2F;ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1483833551&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=grammar+of+graphics&amp;sa-no-redirect=1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=akhn-20&amp;linkId=a24987cf311b4d463e558953a02aabeb" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Grammar-Graphics-Statistics-Computing...</a><p>This book changed my perception of creativity, aesthetics and mathematics and their relationships. Fundamentally, the book provides all the diverse tools to give you confidence that your graphics are mathematically sound and visually pleasing. After reading this, Tufte just doesn&#x27;t cut it anymore. It&#x27;s such a weird book because it talks about topics as disparate Bayesian rule, OOP, color theory, SQL, chaotic models of time (lolwut), style-sheet language design and a bjillion other topics but always somehow all of these are very relevant. It&#x27;s like if Bret Victor was a book, a tour de force of polymathical insanity.<p>The book is in full color and it has some of the nicest looking and most instructive graphics I&#x27;ve ever seen even for things that I understand, such as Central Limit Theorem. It makes sense the the best graphics would be in the book written by the guy who wrote a book on how to do visualizations mathematically.
The book is also interesting if you are doing any sort of UI interfaces, because UI interfaces are definitely just a subset of graphical visualizations.<p># Scala for Machine Learning<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Scala-Machine-Learning-Patrick-Nicolas&#x2F;dp&#x2F;1783558741&#x2F;ref=as_li_ss_tl?sa-no-redirect=1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=akhn-20&amp;linkId=f79b946c3b993086bf6e1c6d5baba530" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Scala-Machine-Learning-Patrick-Nicola...</a><p>This book almost never gets mentioned but it&#x27;s a superb intro to machine learning if you dig types, scalable back-ends or JVM.<p>It’s the only ML book that I’ve seen that contains the word monad so if you sometimes get a hankering for some monading (esp. in the context of ML pipelines), look no further.<p>Discusses setup of actual large scale ML pipelines using modern concurrency primitives such as actors using the Akka framework.<p># Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn and TensorFlow: Concepts, Tools, and Techniques for Building Intelligent Systems<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Hands-Machine-Learning-Scikit-Learn-TensorFlow&#x2F;dp&#x2F;1491962291&#x2F;ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1484524457&amp;sr=1-4&amp;keywords=tensorflow&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=akhn-20&amp;linkId=3defd0415456891a643c1f469d3d25fc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Hands-Machine-Learning-Scikit-Learn-T...</a><p>Not released yet but I&#x27;ve been reading the drafts and it&#x27;s a nice intro to machine learning using modern ML frameworks, TensorFlow and Scikit-Learn.<p># Basic Category Theory for Computer Scientists<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;0262660717&#x2F;ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=akhn-20&amp;linkId=8c3134b0b0f77535181ab284c307e862" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;0262660717&#x2F;ref=as_li_ss_tl...</a><p>Not done with the book but despite it&#x27;s age, hands down best intro to category theory if you care about it only for CS purposes as it tries to show how to apply the concepts. Very concise (~70 pages).<p># Markov Logic: An Interface Layer for Artificial Intelligence<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Markov-Logic-Interface-Artificial-Intelligence&#x2F;dp&#x2F;1598296922&#x2F;ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1484525312&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=markov+logic&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=akhn-20&amp;linkId=fac3a76632e543c1fc43138177ca15b1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Markov-Logic-Interface-Artificial-Int...</a><p>Have you ever wondered what&#x27;s the relationship between machine learning and logic? If so look no further.<p># Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective (Adaptive Computation and Machine Learning series)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;0262018020&#x2F;ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=akhn-20&amp;linkId=a4d27cbb764ec79ea34ddaf4e51dcf41" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;0262018020&#x2F;ref=as_li_ss_tl...</a><p>Exhaustive overview of the entire field of machine learning. It&#x27;s engaging and full of graphics.<p># Deep Learning<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;0262035618&#x2F;ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=akhn-20&amp;linkId=0767299f472486a6688d7d5df831d691" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;0262035618&#x2F;ref=as_li_ss_tl...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.deeplearningbook.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.deeplearningbook.org&#x2F;</a><p>You probably have heard about this whole &quot;deep learning&quot; meme.  This book is a pretty self-contained intro into the state of the art of deep learning.<p># Designing for Scalability with Erlang&#x2F;OTP: Implement Robust, Fault-Tolerant Systems<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Designing-Scalability-Erlang-OTP-Fault-Tolerant&#x2F;dp&#x2F;1449320732&#x2F;ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=8KVM0G4T0EQR2C9XH2F9&amp;sa-no-redirect=1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=akhn-20&amp;linkId=253570acccdf384b260c433265747d3e" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Designing-Scalability-Erlang-OTP-Faul...</a><p>Even though this is an Erlang book (I don&#x27;t really know Erlang), 1&#x2F;3 of the book is devoted to designing scalable and robust distributed systems in a general setting which I found the book worth it on it&#x27;s own.<p># Practical Foundations for Programming Languages<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;1107150302&#x2F;ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=akhn-20&amp;linkId=47e57e2ea9b3e926b5ffdc940c4f3ae7" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;1107150302&#x2F;ref=as_li_ss_tl...</a><p>Not much to say, probably THE book on programming language theory.<p># A First Course in Network Theory<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;First-Course-Network-Theory&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0198726465&#x2F;ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1484523709&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=network+theory&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=akhn-20&amp;linkId=22c763111aba8c33d26e931eb49964c8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;First-Course-Network-Theory&#x2F;dp&#x2F;019872...</a><p>Up until recently I didn&#x27;t know the difference between graphs and networks. But look at me now, I still don&#x27;t but at least I have a book on it.