I love Indian tech books. Fancy art? Whitespace? Those are expensive waste of paper. NO, dense tech diagrams and running code. No page intentionally left blank.

https://archive.org/details/c-in-depth-2nd-ed.-srivastava.pdf/mode/2up

Contrast with this shit. "Why use functions?"
https://archive.org/details/beginners-step-by-step-coding-course-learn-computer-programming-the-easy-way-uk-edition/page/n49/mode/2up

Oh, you say picking on a Scratch book for kids is unfair? BUT when I was a kid we learned from Ahl's books. Your kids are weak.
#programming

Design of the UNIX Operating System
by Maurice J. Bach
https://archive.org/details/DesignUNIXOperatingSystem/

Hardware
Kernel
sh who a.out date wc grep ed vi ld as comp cpp nroff

WTF is comp? It's not in the index, nor any man page I know.

#unix #ed

Chaos & Cyber Culture by Timothy Leary
With guest appearances by:
👉 William Gibson
👉 Winona Ryder
👉 William S. Burroughs
👉 David Byrne

https://archive.org/details/ChaosAndCyberCulture/mode/2up

Ah, the four horsemen of the cyber apocalypse! … not.

I'm guessing from the pop star list, and a quick flip-thru, it's pretty commercial trash, reheated '60s shit. I never saw it in 1994, and I was the most technical boy in town, as the has-been said.

#cyber #cyberpunk #drugs

The only Bible I believe in.
https://archive.org/details/mac_MacWorld_Mac_OS_X_Leopard_Bible_2008_native/mode/2up

(the Tiger volume is No Borrow, fuckhead publishers)
#macos

Structured Programming
by O.-J. Dahl, E. W. Dijkstra, C. A. R. Hoare
https://archive.org/details/Structured_Programming__Dahl_Dijkstra_Hoare/page/n1/mode/2up
#programming

I've read EWD's Discipline of Programming, which I assume contains a lot of this but refined? I don't always agree with EWD but he was worth "arguing" with.

The best of the best computer magazine of all time:
https://archive.org/search?query=%22best+of+creative+computing%22&sort=title
#programming #retrocomputing #basic

If you're gonna read anything I link to, *read these*. Type in some programs with a BASIC like
http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/basic/

Oh, this is super useful. I had this book, but samizdat photocopies in a binder. Getting any non-German docs for GFA was a nightmare back then.

Also gives me a real Traveller vibe.

https://archive.org/details/GFA_BASIC_Book/mode/2up
#retrocomputing #atari #basic

Just as old:
Smalltalk-80: Bits of History
https://archive.org/details/Bits_Of_History_Glenn_Krasner/mode/2up
#retrocomputing #smalltalk

Slightly less shitty scan of the cover below.

The cover is really just awful. Like, I think less of Smalltalk (which I have professionally programmed in) because of this cover. The more I look the worse it gets.

GFA, made basically solo by Frank, went with all black & text, and it still looks awesome. This, made by a $1B+ corporation, tried to do graphics but couldn't hire a skilled chimp.

And Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds!
https://archive.org/details/designing-virtual-worlds/

Fantastic textbook on MUDs, early VR, social management of MMOs.
#mud #lambdamoo #mmo #vr