What do Computer Scientists Read? - Computerphile

Throughout 2022 we asked the sound-check question "what's your favourite book?"

Answers:
Structured Computer Organization
Andrew S. Tanenbaum

UNIX: A History and a Memoir
Brian W Kernighan

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
Fred Brooks

Understanding Cryptography: A Textbook for Students and Practitioners
Christof Paar , Jan Pelzl , et al.

Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen

Bad Blood
John Carreyrou

Empire of Pain
Patrick Radden Keefe

A Spy Among Friends: Philby and the Great Betrayal
Ben Macintyre

The Glass Bead Game
Hermann Hesse

Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton
William F. Buckley Jr.

House of Sleep
Jonathan Coe

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Claire North

The History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Douglas Hofstadter

Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll

Effective Modern C++: 42 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of C++11 and C++14
Scott Meyers

All Systems Red (Kindle Single): The Murderbot Diaries
Martha Wells

Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos Book 1)
Dan Simmons


This video was filmed and edited by Sean Riley.

[fatelvis]

I think it's safe to say we need more videos like these

[andymorales]

Thank you for listing the answers in the description box !! Greatly appreciated ! 😸

[sean_vikoren]

That was really fun. Thank you for sharing.

[Graham_Rule]

I enjoyed some of these books in the 1980s but haven't read them since. They are all in my living room so this weekend I'll revisit "Gödel, Escher, Bach", "The Glass Bead Game", and "The Mythical Man-Month".

[Yupppi]

I like these sound-check question videos. Always interesting answers. And it's interesting trying to think what your own answer would be. Would it be something casual entertainment, detective stories or some fancier literature from Russia.

Imagine being Mike Pound, a university computer scientist and saying "I read so much at work I don't read on free time, I code on free time"

[vectoralphaSec]

Ever since the programming language video I've wanted more videos on just general CS questions. Please make more of these videos.

[april]

Great content! Great mixture of academic and non-academic books! I finally found which books to read in 2023. Please do this book recommendations more/every year!

[MikeAltogether]

The person who liked spy thrillers might enjoy The Cuckoo's Egg. It's a true story (autobiographical) about a computer scientist in the 1980s who discovered a Soviet spy on the internet and helped the US government track them down. It gives great insight into what the internet was like at the beginning. I read it in high school and was absolutely enthralled. I think I might try it again.

Within the context of Computerphiles (and keeping it tech related) I really enjoyed the book, "Fuzzy Logic" from 1993 by Paul Freilberger & Daniel McNeill. It sparked my imagination and as I was back then very much into electronic music, I saw so many relationships to contemporary music. Though my path is different these days it's still on the quick memory recall list of points in time and ideas that had a huge affect on my process and my journey.

[raphaelradespiel]

Great video loved all the recommendations

[GodofWar]

Awesome books which I've taken note of. I've been collecting a lot of computer science books spanning multiple fields.
The books I've read and am continually re-reading are:
"Language Implementation Patterns"
"The Elements of Computing Systems"
"Crafting Interpreters"
"A philosophy of Software Design"
...

And about approximately 40 other books.

[julianneuer]

The First 15 Lives of Harry August is one of the best books I've ever read

[LeonardChurch]

Was not expecting a recommendation for First Fifteen Lives of Harry August because I feel like it flew under the radar. I listened to that earlier this year on Audible and it was absolutely fantastic.

[FlesHBoX]

Man, friend gave me a copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach and I've never gotten around to reading it. That was about a decade ago... I really should make a point of picking it up and reading it.

[JotoCraft]

A book I would recommend for software developers and related jobs or actually for everybody working in a team: "the phoenix project" as well as "the unicorn project".

[SaschaKersken]

If I had to pick ONE favourite fiction book, it would be the five-volume collection of Douglas Adams's "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". For non-fiction, I would pick "Gödel, Escher, Bach" like the one guy in the video. My favourite computer science books include the original "The C Programming Language" by K&R, "Algorithms" by Sedgewick and Wayne, and "Modern Operating Systems" by Andrew Tanenbaum.

[bouncypeople]

One book I think is pretty relevant today is “If It’s Smart It’s Vulnerable” by Mikko Hypponen. Great book, he briefly goes over some history of the internet, shares his own experiences (in short stories) and provides insights about the future of the internet.

[Danny-hjqg]

'Programming: Principles & Practice Using C++' - Bjarne Stroustrup

[SteveGouldinSpain]

Jaw dropped! Nobody said 'The C Programming Language. 2nd Edition by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie'

[CaptainMcAwesomepan]

I was secretly hoping for a William Gibson or two. I'll just have to assume the guys that got asked "What's your favourite computer science book" would probably have gone with Neuromancer if they hadn't had to say Advanced C++