My Favorite Books: Part One

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Abstraction: Five curated programming and CS book recommendations from catonmat blogger

Key points:

"The New Turing Omnibus" by A.K. Dewdney: 66 casual essays on core CS topics (compression, Turing machines, recursion, neural networks) — no heavy math, recommended for broad CS curiosity
"The Little Book of Semaphores" by Allen Downey (free PDF): problem-hint-solution format for multithreading and synchronization, especially for self-taught developers
"Programming Pearls" and "More Programming Pearls" by Jon Bentley: timeless algorithmic reasoning; reportedly sufficient for passing Google interviews
"The Little Schemer" by Friedman and Felleisen: Socratic dialogue teaching recursion and LISP/Scheme (car, cdr, cons, Y-combinator)
"The Elements of Programming Style" by Kernighan and Plauger: 70 rules for clear code, modeled on Strunk and White's "Elements of Style"

Connections: Catonmat · Algorithms · Concurrency · Programming Style