The book which taught me to "really" program is certainly the quirkiest that I've ever read. "Learn to Program with Visual Basic 6" [0]
My dad purchased it for me when I was nine. He didn't know how to program, but he took a stab in the dark. I diligently read through the whole book and worked through all of the lessons. It's written in a conversational, narrative style about a college course where the students produce a piece of software for a china shop.
I think you'd be hard-pressed to actually derive much value from this book unless you're keen to learn an antiquated version of Visual Basic and have the patience for a book targeted at absolute beginners, but it's definitely quirky. And for me, holds a lot of sentimental value.
Not a computing book with code but it taught me a lot about what can be done with computers, and that they are marvelous machines.
- Architecture of Symbolic Computers - Kogge
An ode to what could have been if RISC and x86 hadn't steamrolled the landscape.
- Thinking Forth - Leo Brodie
Forth is wild, this book is wild, it's really a different world. After multiple attempts over 25 years, I'm giving it another go this year and this time it is actually clicking.
- Malicious Cryptography: Exposing Cryptovirology - Adam Young, Moti Yung
This is way out of my league in terms of cryptography, but this fascinated me early in my career, and led me to implement one or the other algorithm. Very prescient in many ways.
- Patterns of Software - Richard Gabriel
Not directly about computing, but I got a lot of deep insights from this book. It also brought me to the next book:
- Notes on the synthesis of form - Christopher Alexander
This is not a computing book per se, but it goes to the core of system architecture. Even in its original field, this book is kind of wild.
- All Mathematica Guidebooks - Michael Trott
Mathematica is wild, these books are wild, they are old but still oh so inspiring.
> Mathematica is wild, these books are wild, they are old but still oh so inspiring.
Great recommendation. Are these so old? I skimmed through [1] and they seem still on print and relevant?
What is other inspiring Mathematica literature? I have been considering Mathematica to cover some of the gaps Julia (and R or Python have). Particularly in the symbolics camp [2].
It's also nice Mathematica is free on Raspberry Pi, but it might be too slow to be of any practical use.
Very good list, I look forward to diving into those that I've not had any exposure to. Without a doubt Kogge and Brodie will appear on my list one day.
I see a few mentions of beginner-level books that have struck a chord with people here and I empathise, as by far the computer book with the most formative impact on me was the Macintosh Bible 4th ed.
Certainly quirky, it was also one of the best attempts to capture why the Mac was different, why UX mattered, and codified for a young me a certain way of thinking about apps just as much as the Hacker Dictionary did for an earlier era.
I think one of the first "quirky" computer books I can remember is a user manual for the Epson MX-80 dot matrix printer from the 1980s. It was written in a much more relaxed, personable style than almost any other computer books of the time. https://www.apple.asimov.net/documentation/hardware/printers...
But if it’s the same manual I had for that same printer, it was hysterical. For example at one point they showed how to generate arbitrary graphics for the 7 (I think) pin head by encoding as binary. Then just before the next section the manual said something like “now before you run off to forge a copy of the Mona Lisa…”
It's entirely hand-lettered. The author's afterword remarks that an attentive reader will notice the shakier lettering toward the end of the book.
He wrote a couple other books on programming (I think he did Illustrating Pascal). It's a quirky approach, but very friendly and unintimidating compared to vanilla textbooks.
I came here to ask if anyone could remember this weird handlettered book on BASIC which illustrated all kinds of concepts including linked lists using arrays of boxes and arrows. I believe this must have been it unless there’s another book that was like this. I vividly remember as a kid reading all these different books about computers and programming. I found that I had to read a bunch of books in order to find the right mix of explanations that gelled in my mind. Instead of reading one or two books on BASIC and getting frustrated, I probably read a dozen. This one really appealed to my visual brain.
I was just going to comment on this book; one of my favorites as well. The follow on book "Thinking Forth" was similarly mind opening. http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/
I have a book on Forth, which I currently can't remember the title or author of but it had a blue cover a bit like Starting FORTH (I'm pretty sure it wasn't this) but was typeset on a 7-pin dot-matrix printer. Literally all the body copy is dot-matrix.
Oh, also the Jupiter Ace programming manual, which starts off with a very simple introduction to Forth and by around Chapter 22 has circuit diagrams for homebrew peripherals.
My favorite quirky computing book was something I found in the library by chance at my university when I should've been attending a Principles of Programming Languages course.
We'd been learning Prolog in class for the past two weeks but I'm terrible at learning from lectures, so eventually I decided it'd be a better use of my time to locate a book I could teach myself from rather than doodling in class.
IIRC it hadn't been checked out since the 80's: it was a slim volume on Prolog with an Alice in Wonderland theme. I can't remember the title or anything, but it was an enjoyable read, and effective: I still hadn't written any Prolog at the time of the exam—which I remember was 4 days out at the time I picked up the book— but I understood it well enough by then to solve all the problems without flaw including some extra credit challenge problem :)
How long ago did you check it out? If it was recent enough, then the library you checked it out from would have record of it. I'd love to know what the book was!
I've searched and searched and can't find any Prolog book that matches this description. Hopefully you're able to find or remember it.
It's not as high-minded as the examples in the link, but as a kid I really enjoyed Woody Leonhard's "Mother of All..." books about Windows (the 3.1 and 95 ones, specifically).
Woody introduced a series of characters, each with their own personality & level of familiarity with Windows itself, then used them in asides to explain things. The great thing about those books (and something I seldom see anymore) is that they were really great about riding the line between 'the power button is the button you press to turn the computer on' and 'the A20 gate defines when low memory etc. etc. etc.'
Having the characters gave a great way to get super-deep into minutiae but let the reader know they could skip if it didn't interest them, plus their interactions with each other were really fun.
Also, and I'm sure most people know him already, I always really loved how David Pogue would put weird little stories or dialog in the examples he'd give when demonstrating a program. Like I think Macs for Dummies had a bit where his Word examples had a really flowery story about a guy riding a rollercoaster or something. Really influenced me, whenever I create a demo UI or example page I try not to use boring "This is example text" or "Lorem ipsum."
The Microwriter is a one-handed portable digital word processor from 1978. It has an excellent 'New user's guide' that is easy-to-read and full of humour too.
The user guide is written as a conversation between the "author" and a cartoon picture of a key (button) with a face, arms and legs. The key represents the impatient and inquisitive user who can't wait to start using the device. It's worth remembering that most users where unfamiliar with computer jargon:
<author> Don't worry: correcting is easy but first you must learn about COMMANDS.
Aside: Bill Buxton, the computer scientist and designer, had this to say of the guide: "I think that the New User’s Guide is one of the best examples of technical writing that I have ever seen in a user’s manual. I love the parallel use of different representations to get the message across. I really appreciated it when I was learning, and think that the manual is worth studying for its approach."
After going to college for journalism and graphic design in the early 90s, I decided to become a programmer, despite not having done it since I was in grade school (though, I was pretty hot shit on my TRS-80). My first book on the topic was, in retrospect, pretty crazy, but I've been a tech professional for 25+ years now, so it must have been useful. I'm speaking of The Cartoon Guide to Computers [1][2]. If there's a more quirky (but useful!) computing book than that, I'd be pretty surprised.
I remember specifically learning about flip-flops from the book, and wondering what sort of crazy magical physics made it work. It took me 20 years to finally learn it simply has to do with the timing of the electrical signal as it propagates around the gates [3].
Re-reading it again now, it's actually a surprisingly thorough overview of the history and fundamentals of computer science. I had forgotten.
Writing Interactive Compilers and Interpreters by Peter John Brown (1979) is quirky in the sense that he paid unusual attention to the literary quality of his prose.
Among his admonitions for writing user manuals is this:
Read. Books on overall style are a matter of personal taste. Our own favourite is Strunk (1959). As examples of good writing on technical matters, we especially like the works of D. E. Knuth and of M. V. Wilkes, and also the book "Software Tools" (Kernighan and Plauger, 1976). Perhaps the most pleasant of all writing on technical matters is in the field of gardening, not computing; read "The Small Garden" by Lucas Phillips (1952) and not only your turnips but also you writing will improve.
I appreciate the effort but other than the play on Ed woods movie title, I'm not exactly sure what makes this book "quirky". Skimming through the first dozen pages available for free, it struck me as a relatively academic and dry treatise on scheme.
Fairly fresh into comp arch, this book really highlighted for me the interaction of HW and SW, and how from a minimal arch we can build and improve it. I'm still sad that stack modern architectures didn't take off as Koopman envisioned it.
[+] [-] bastawhiz|3 years ago|reply
My dad purchased it for me when I was nine. He didn't know how to program, but he took a stab in the dark. I diligently read through the whole book and worked through all of the lessons. It's written in a conversational, narrative style about a college course where the students produce a piece of software for a china shop.
I think you'd be hard-pressed to actually derive much value from this book unless you're keen to learn an antiquated version of Visual Basic and have the patience for a book targeted at absolute beginners, but it's definitely quirky. And for me, holds a lot of sentimental value.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Program-Visual-Basic-6/dp/19027...
[+] [-] math-dev|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] larve|3 years ago|reply
- The Plenitude - Rich Gold
Not a computing book with code but it taught me a lot about what can be done with computers, and that they are marvelous machines.
- Architecture of Symbolic Computers - Kogge
An ode to what could have been if RISC and x86 hadn't steamrolled the landscape.
- Thinking Forth - Leo Brodie
Forth is wild, this book is wild, it's really a different world. After multiple attempts over 25 years, I'm giving it another go this year and this time it is actually clicking.
- Malicious Cryptography: Exposing Cryptovirology - Adam Young, Moti Yung
This is way out of my league in terms of cryptography, but this fascinated me early in my career, and led me to implement one or the other algorithm. Very prescient in many ways.
- Patterns of Software - Richard Gabriel
Not directly about computing, but I got a lot of deep insights from this book. It also brought me to the next book:
- Notes on the synthesis of form - Christopher Alexander
This is not a computing book per se, but it goes to the core of system architecture. Even in its original field, this book is kind of wild.
- All Mathematica Guidebooks - Michael Trott
Mathematica is wild, these books are wild, they are old but still oh so inspiring.
[+] [-] nextos|3 years ago|reply
> Mathematica is wild, these books are wild, they are old but still oh so inspiring.
Great recommendation. Are these so old? I skimmed through [1] and they seem still on print and relevant?
What is other inspiring Mathematica literature? I have been considering Mathematica to cover some of the gaps Julia (and R or Python have). Particularly in the symbolics camp [2].
It's also nice Mathematica is free on Raspberry Pi, but it might be too slow to be of any practical use.
[1] http://www.mathematicaguidebooks.org
[2] https://www.12000.org/my_notes/CAS_integration_tests/reports...
[+] [-] fogus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rramadass|3 years ago|reply
The Architecture of Symbolic Computers by Kogge looks very interesting; covering Function-based computing and Logic-based computing.
[+] [-] gone35|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tuukkah|3 years ago|reply
"the epic of the computer revolution, the bible of the hacker dream. [Nelson] was stubborn enough to publish it when no one else seemed to think it was a good idea." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines
[+] [-] ryukafalz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bonaldi|3 years ago|reply
Certainly quirky, it was also one of the best attempts to capture why the Mac was different, why UX mattered, and codified for a young me a certain way of thinking about apps just as much as the Hacker Dictionary did for an earlier era.
The personality of its editor, Arthur Naiman, also shone through. I was sad to see when looking him up that he died in 2019. Short obituary here: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/sfgate/name/arthur-naim...
[+] [-] geoffeg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffwass|3 years ago|reply
But if it’s the same manual I had for that same printer, it was hysterical. For example at one point they showed how to generate arbitrary graphics for the 7 (I think) pin head by encoding as binary. Then just before the next section the manual said something like “now before you run off to forge a copy of the Mona Lisa…”
[+] [-] kabdib|3 years ago|reply
https://books.google.com/books/about/Illustrating_BASIC.html...
It's entirely hand-lettered. The author's afterword remarks that an attentive reader will notice the shakier lettering toward the end of the book.
He wrote a couple other books on programming (I think he did Illustrating Pascal). It's a quirky approach, but very friendly and unintimidating compared to vanilla textbooks.
[+] [-] s1mon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wernsey|3 years ago|reply
https://archive.org/details/cambridge-university-press-illus...
[+] [-] arisbe__|3 years ago|reply
One of my favorite books ever.
[+] [-] brianobush|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gordonjcp|3 years ago|reply
I think it's in storage just now :-/
[+] [-] Gordonjcp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neilv|3 years ago|reply
This was one of the required books in Leslie Kaelbling's intro AI or robotics courses.
The preview on Amazon might cut a little too early before (IIRC) some seemingly complex behavior emerging from very simple mechanics really clicks.
[+] [-] lioeters|3 years ago|reply
https://natureofcode.com/book/
[+] [-] westoncb|3 years ago|reply
We'd been learning Prolog in class for the past two weeks but I'm terrible at learning from lectures, so eventually I decided it'd be a better use of my time to locate a book I could teach myself from rather than doodling in class.
IIRC it hadn't been checked out since the 80's: it was a slim volume on Prolog with an Alice in Wonderland theme. I can't remember the title or anything, but it was an enjoyable read, and effective: I still hadn't written any Prolog at the time of the exam—which I remember was 4 days out at the time I picked up the book— but I understood it well enough by then to solve all the problems without flaw including some extra credit challenge problem :)
Has anyone else come across this book?
[+] [-] lhoff|3 years ago|reply
[0]http://libgen.is/search.php?&req=Prolog&phrase=1&view=simple...
[+] [-] axlprose|3 years ago|reply
http://webdam.inria.fr/Alice/
[+] [-] 7thaccount|3 years ago|reply
The book revolves around teaching prolog by showing you how to make text adventure games. It is pretty neat.
[+] [-] tahoupt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] homarp|3 years ago|reply
Computers in Education: Prolog as a Cognitive Tool
page 368 has a few stuff around "Alice in Wonderland"
[+] [-] bmitc|3 years ago|reply
I've searched and searched and can't find any Prolog book that matches this description. Hopefully you're able to find or remember it.
[+] [-] benjaminpv|3 years ago|reply
Woody introduced a series of characters, each with their own personality & level of familiarity with Windows itself, then used them in asides to explain things. The great thing about those books (and something I seldom see anymore) is that they were really great about riding the line between 'the power button is the button you press to turn the computer on' and 'the A20 gate defines when low memory etc. etc. etc.'
Having the characters gave a great way to get super-deep into minutiae but let the reader know they could skip if it didn't interest them, plus their interactions with each other were really fun.
Also, and I'm sure most people know him already, I always really loved how David Pogue would put weird little stories or dialog in the examples he'd give when demonstrating a program. Like I think Macs for Dummies had a bit where his Word examples had a really flowery story about a guy riding a rollercoaster or something. Really influenced me, whenever I create a demo UI or example page I try not to use boring "This is example text" or "Lorem ipsum."
[+] [-] Turing_Machine|3 years ago|reply
Let's Talk Lisp, by Laurent Siklóssy
Robots On Your Doorstep, by Nels Winkless and Iben Browning
[+] [-] hazelnut-tree|3 years ago|reply
The user guide is written as a conversation between the "author" and a cartoon picture of a key (button) with a face, arms and legs. The key represents the impatient and inquisitive user who can't wait to start using the device. It's worth remembering that most users where unfamiliar with computer jargon:
<author> Don't worry: correcting is easy but first you must learn about COMMANDS.
<cartoon key> Sounds a bit military!
---
<Section title> Carriage-returns
<cartoon key> Train going backwards?
<author> No!
---
Microwriter New user's guide [PDF, 18mb] https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection/a/pdf/Microwriter...
Aside: Bill Buxton, the computer scientist and designer, had this to say of the guide: "I think that the New User’s Guide is one of the best examples of technical writing that I have ever seen in a user’s manual. I love the parallel use of different representations to get the message across. I really appreciated it when I was learning, and think that the manual is worth studying for its approach."
[+] [-] leoc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fogus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] russellbeattie|3 years ago|reply
I remember specifically learning about flip-flops from the book, and wondering what sort of crazy magical physics made it work. It took me 20 years to finally learn it simply has to do with the timing of the electrical signal as it propagates around the gates [3].
Re-reading it again now, it's actually a surprisingly thorough overview of the history and fundamentals of computer science. I had forgotten.
1. http://www.larrygonick.com/titles/science/the-cartoon-guide-...
2. https://archive.org/details/TheCartoonGuideToComputerScience
3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-flop_(electronics)
[+] [-] Eupraxias|3 years ago|reply
I'll add that really ALL of his 'Cartoon' books are worth a read.
[+] [-] axlprose|3 years ago|reply
https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf
[+] [-] epilys|3 years ago|reply
at least read the excellent anti-preface by Ritchie. It's hilarious.
[+] [-] wrp|3 years ago|reply
Among his admonitions for writing user manuals is this:
Read. Books on overall style are a matter of personal taste. Our own favourite is Strunk (1959). As examples of good writing on technical matters, we especially like the works of D. E. Knuth and of M. V. Wilkes, and also the book "Software Tools" (Kernighan and Plauger, 1976). Perhaps the most pleasant of all writing on technical matters is in the field of gardening, not computing; read "The Small Garden" by Lucas Phillips (1952) and not only your turnips but also you writing will improve.
[+] [-] nils-m-holm|3 years ago|reply
For example: Scheme 9 from Empty Space (http://t3x.org/s9book/), LISP from Nothing (http://t3x.org/lfn/), but also Write Your Own Compiler (http://t3x.org/t3x/book.html).
[+] [-] throwaway675309|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teddyh|3 years ago|reply
https://books.google.com/books?id=6f8VqnZaPQwC
[+] [-] pinewurst|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roganp|3 years ago|reply
Entertaining and informative. Highly recommended.
[+] [-] baileycoffee|3 years ago|reply
It’s such a fun and quirky book on so many levels and I really believe it was a major factor in setting the tone of the entire Perl community.
[+] [-] JoachimS|3 years ago|reply
https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/stack_computers/index.htm...
(The book is free to download by the author.)
Fairly fresh into comp arch, this book really highlighted for me the interaction of HW and SW, and how from a minimal arch we can build and improve it. I'm still sad that stack modern architectures didn't take off as Koopman envisioned it.