A list of free programming books

https://github.com/vhf/free-programming-books/blob/master/free-programming-books.md

by vhf • 13 years ago

455 64 13 years ago

github.com

blueblob2• 13 years ago

I like how this is nearly exactly the text from the stack overflow question...

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-ava...

vhf2• 13 years ago

README.md says : " This list initially was a clone of stackoverflow - List of freely available programming books by George Stocker. Now updated, with dead links gone (hopefully) and new content. "

I've had this SO list in my bookmarks for long enough, and there were more and more dead links in it. I felt the need to move it to github in order to keep it up-to-date and to augment it.

I apologize if the intention or original source were not made clear.

raganwald2• 13 years ago

This is the right thing to do. SO has a very specific vision, that of finding and displaying the definitive answer to an objective question.

A resource like this doesn't fit their model, even if you strain it by trying to invent a question that appears to fit their format.

"This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed."

blueblob2• 13 years ago

Sorry, I didn't look at the url and thought this was the README.md :-(

I have given you an upvote

denzil_correa• 13 years ago

Here's a nice collection about the same on Stack Overflow as well - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-ava...

raganwald2• 13 years ago

I discovered that when I Read The Fine Article directly. I also discovered that the original list os frozen and out-of-date. It includes at least one book that is no longer freely available, and omits my own JavaScript Allongé, which was made free this month.

vhf2• 13 years ago

And which was among the first additions to this list, because it truly is an awesome read !

buckbova2• 13 years ago

I just started on "JavaScript Allongé" and am really enjoying your prose and working through the examples. Good job!

I had to look up what _allongé_ meant as I've never heard it ordered. It sounds like the perfect drink.

"coffee beverage made by using an espresso machine to make an espresso (single or double dose or shot) with much more water (generally twice as much), resulting in a stretched espresso"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungo

aram• 13 years ago

It's interesting to see how git/Github as a platform replaces Wikipedia in certain cases for collecting information and enabling people to contribute.

ohblahitsme2• 13 years ago

Yeah, especially with Markdown integration, which makes incredibly easy for someone to host their own "information site" and make it look nice and modern. I wonder if Wikipedia would ever change their revision system in favor of git.

webjprgm• 13 years ago

Someone would have to own each Wikipedia page to approve pull requests. As it is now, anyone can do the edits directly even if there's not a person dedicated to curating a particular page.

guynamedloren2• 13 years ago

Yep. There are huge advantages to a GitHub model over Wikipedia for collecting information.

Shameless plug, but highly relevant: I'm trying to make 'git as a platform' more accessible for non-programmers with a project I'm working on - http://www.penflip.com. Wrote about it in detail here: http://madebyloren.com/github-for-writers

Glad to discuss it further if anybody's interested.

Jun8• 13 years ago

Just looked at this, sounds like a great idea! I would use it to create a textbook for the high-school programming course I teach.

sygma• 13 years ago

Have you seen Draft [0]? It seems fairly close to your concept of "github for writers".

[0] https://draftin.com

ohblahitsme2• 13 years ago

Similar list with more differences than the Stack Overflow one: http://programming-motherfucker.com/become.html

buckbova2• 13 years ago

Red-gate has some decent and current t-sql programming books and mssql dev books available for free.

http://www.red-gate.com/community/books/

blinkingled• 13 years ago

This one about building Android apps using HTML/JS/CSS isn't free anymore - http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9781449383268/ - itwas in Open Feedback Publishing System some time ago. Now you'd need to buy it. (BTW, it has 2.5 stars on Oreilly site.)

Splendor• 13 years ago

That's already been identified as an issue in the github repo.

frncscgmz• 13 years ago

It seams the Learning Android book was removed by O'Reilly.

JustinBlaird• 13 years ago

http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-lisp-intro/ 404

Jtsummers• 13 years ago

http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/eintr.html

This is where the resources has moved to.

staunch• 13 years ago

mjd's Higher Order Perl should be on most people's must-read list: http://hop.perl.plover.com/book/

kamaal• 13 years ago

This is one book, you absolutely must read. Even if you don't program in Perl.

This is basically the equivalent of SICP for the scripting world.

thewarrior• 13 years ago

I checked it out after you recommended it in another thread. Its great. Any other recommendations ?

aswanson• 13 years ago

Thanks. I hate looking at perl syntax but will investigate based on this comment.

auvrw• 13 years ago

it's a really good book, no doubt, but comparing it to sicp is a bit much. if you don't program in perl already, it might be more beneficial to just learn haskell, and writing some functional perl could be a first step toward that goal, particularly if you're coming from a background in C. i read some of if while learning perl because i was already somewhat familiar with functional programming.

nieve• 13 years ago

Higher Order Perl is the book that actually got me excited about Perl again after using it for ten years and then not needing to touch it for five. As usual MJD is clear, absorbing, and has great taste in what to write about. So many techniques are a great fit for Perl/Ruby/Python and yet are completely absent from books on those languages.

brothmc• 13 years ago

http://addyosmani.github.io/backbone-fundamentals/

th3byrdm4n• 13 years ago

Yes, this is basically a carbon copy of other lists, but I found at least one resource that was new to me - http://refcardz.dzone.com/ So cool.

Thanks :D

LoneWolf• 13 years ago

Now all I need is an automated way to download them all

bbx• 13 years ago

I used to have the same reaction when stumbling upon lists like this. But it has never proved to be a great idea. You get easily overwhelmed by the amount and variety of content available. Before even starting reading one of these books, you need to filter them by topic, by scope, by usefulness, and by quality. You inevitably end up starting none of them.

I prefer focusing on one subject or programming language, search the internet for feedbacks and reviews, select the one book (free or not) that fits my needs and read that one. I'm consequently more informed about what my further needs are: do I want to learn more about this programming language? Or about a different but complementary one? Or do I need to reach for a more language-agnostic topic?

It's the usual "quality over quantity" issue, that prevents yourself from taking no decision at all when facing too many options.

jrs99• 13 years ago

i had that same experience. most books are good but are usually replaceable. some books i can't understand how good they are because they're beyond my level. And a few are just right, and also take you to that "a-ha moment."

you need to do your research and select that one right book and work through it. If in the middle of a book you think you're not making good progress, you should just drop it and find another one.

puzanop• 13 years ago

wish there was a list of !!!good!!! programming book, not even free. Like, book that would make you a better dev.

pekk• 13 years ago

Can you point out at least one programming book which makes you a worse developer?

Doesn't it depend on what specifically you are trying to learn?

malexw• 13 years ago

I think the point is that there are only so many hours in a human lifespan. While I'd love to read everything that the world has to say on the subject, I'd like to focus on books that will be the most enlightening (or entertaining).

dreen• 13 years ago

Similar lists/sites:

http://www.coderheya.com

http://hackershelf.com

http://pineapple.io

cjstewart88• 13 years ago

Hah! Thanks for the link, didn't think anyone remembered it. Coder Heya was fun to build, I wish a community would have built around it though.

Deelux2• 13 years ago

Nice, thnk!

justin665• 13 years ago

It seems worth mentioning specific books by name, since lists of lists don't help people differentiate the great from the good. Algorithms by S. Dasgupta, C.H. Papadimitriou, and U.V. Vazirani looks really promising as an introductory algorithms textbook. I wonder if anyone has experience using it in class?

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html

I wonder a little about that text's status as a freely available draft and whether it would be kosher to distribute the pdf if that site disappears.

iyulaev• 13 years ago

Algorithms by S. Dasgupta, C.H. Papadimitriou, and U.V. Vazirani looks really promising as an introductory algorithms textbook. I wonder if anyone has experience using it in class?

We used this in our upper-division intro to algorithms course. Solid book, goes over important algorithms while remaining short and concise, A+ would read again.

tikhonj• 13 years ago

It's basically just the lecture notes for their class bundled up into a book. I took the class it was based off, and, well, it was okay but not great.

It lacks any sort of underlying narrative or structure--I think this is common with algorithms texts in general. Probably why I didn't like the course much. It feels like a bunch of disjoint topics held together very loosely by some techniques that get repeated a bit.

I compare it very unfavorably to Sispser's Introduction to the Theory of Computation which, I felt, was much more coherent as a book. It's not a fair comparison at all because they're about different (although related) subjects, but I think it neatly illustrates my point.

Also, I don't believe Sipser's book is free, so it's not entirely relevant in that sense either. I just brought it up because I think it's the best example of the underlying narrative and structure I was talking about.

LeafStorm• 13 years ago

Two and a half years into my bachelor's, Sipser's Introduction to the Theory of Computation is the only computer science textbook I've had so far that I'd say I really found useful for anything beyond the homework problems, besides K.N. King's C Programming: A Modern Approach.

(To keep this on topic, my assembly instructor -- the legendary [to NC State students] Dana Lasher -- posts his course pack online. [1] It's a comprehensive introduction to computer architecture topics and original 8086 assembly programming.)

[1] http://courses.ncsu.edu/csc236/lec/001/cops.htm

aviraldg2• 13 years ago

Which book would you recommend for algorithms and data structures instead?

chrishepner• 13 years ago

I took the Dasgupta's algorithms class at UCSD a couple years ago. I don't know the legal status of the PDF there, exactly, but he gave the link out to the class and almost everyone in the class used it instead of a physical textbook.

I thought the text (and class) was pretty good, although I'm sure being in the class helped. You should definitely have some experience with basic data structures, discrete math and graph theory before diving into it.

rmrfrmrf• 13 years ago

Thank you!

granttimmerman• 13 years ago

The biggest question now is, where do we start?

simgidacav3• 13 years ago

From a topic you deem interesting of course. But be aware of the fact a book does not give the experience you gain by working hands-on to something.

AsymetricCom• 13 years ago

Aren't they all free?

mck-• 13 years ago

Reminds me of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-ava...

john_hamsters• 13 years ago

http://programming-motherfucker.com/become.html

Another great list of books for programming languages/tools/frameworks/gen dev

simgidacav3• 13 years ago

Semi-OT: For e-book reader owners: you can use pandoc to convert from HTML to ePub.

fest• 13 years ago

Full-OT: pandoc requires ghc, which takes about 1GiB of disk space, which I found very odd, given that gcc is about 75 MiB.

simgidacav3• 13 years ago

Yeah, but dude, it's fukken haskell :D. Good comment anyway, I didn't realize the drawback...

Deelux2• 13 years ago

Great list. Thanks a lot!

I couldn't find this url in this post and it made me pretty happy when I found it. A website full of IT book which can be downloaded for free.

http://www.it-ebooks.info/

A list of free programming books

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