What are some of your recommendations for books, videos, podcasts, or any other media that inspire and spark more passion for programming and computer science in general? I’m interested in hearing how these resources have helped you grow as a programmer.

  • Digital MarkEnglish
    5•1 year ago
    • The Pragmatic Programmer, by Andrew Hunt & David Thomas: How to not suck at programming.
    • Algorithms, by Robert Sedgewick: Stick to the early C or Pascal editions, later ones are full of language-specific Java, etc. distractions.
    • Programming Pearls, by Jon Bentley: Short snippets of how to design & optimize.
    • SICP: Just do every exercise, take it seriously, you’ll learn super powers. Watching the lecture videos alongside is helpful, but the book and problem sets are mandatory.
    • BASIC Computer Games, by David H. Ahl: The type-in listings are fairly hard to read & understand to newbies now, I suspect, but it’s still the master class in how to decompose gameplay problems into low-level programming.

    Videos and podcasts won’t help you, they’re pleasant noise but you learn to program by programming, by taking a problem and solving it.