Introduction to Algorithms
Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, Clifford Stein
71 people recommended it in 24 threads, 2011–2023.
5 commenters pushed back on it — worth reading the threads.
What people on Hacker News said
Or books on fundamentals, like Hennessy and Patterson, like Tannenbaum's Network or Operating systems, Knuth, or Cormen&al on Algorithms.
CLRS Introduction to Algorithms is very cool and all, but as Johnathon Blow pointed out in a talk the fact is that for game development you are better off using the dumbest, most straight-forward data structures you can.
Other than that - the usual suspects on learning C (K&R), UNIX (TAOUP[7]), the bash shell along with grep, sed, awk, more algorithms(CLRS[8]), functional programming and machine learning.
I always keep coming back to the Cormen algorithms book because of its clarity and beauty of explanation.
Perhaps the answer is to thoroughly read the first few chapters/skim the remainder of Introduction to Algorithms; the Dragon book; Computer Networks/Architecture/etc.: A Systems/Quantitative/etc. Approach; Types and Programming Languages; Security Engineering; AI: A Modern Approach and so on -- that was certainly my experience of undergrad CS.
Where it comes up
- Ask HN: What are the most fundamental books on computer science? 2019 · 11 recommendations
- A Comparison of Four Algorithms Textbooks (2016) 2017 · 9 recommendations
- Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read? 2017 · 6 recommendations
- Top Books on Amazon Based on Links in Hacker News Comments 2016 · 5 recommendations
- Ask HN: I have $2k for books, training and confs. What should I spend it on? 2015 · 5 recommendations
- Best algorithms book I ever read 2011 · 4 recommendations
- Must Read CS Books For Self Self-Taught Programmers 2011 · 4 recommendations
- Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise? 2018 · 3 recommendations
- The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow 2017 · 3 recommendations
- Ask HN: What are the most eye-opening textbooks you have ever read? 2023 · 2 recommendations
- Ask HN: The book that did it for you in math and/or CS? 2022 · 2 recommendations
- Books that changed my career as a software engineer 2021 · 2 recommendations
- Reddit's favorite programming books, from 3.5B comments 2017 · 2 recommendations
- Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011 2011 · 2 recommendations
- What is the single most influential book every programmer should read? 2011 · 2 recommendations
- Ask HN: Which books you have read till now that were worth investing time in? 2022 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books? 2020 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: What's one book that changed your life? 2018 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: What's the best textbook you've read? 2018 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: Book Recommendations? 2016 · 1 recommendation