49 books like Land Of Lisp

Smalltalk is not as common or popular as it once was, but the influence its design had on programming is hard to overstate.

Reading this book has changed how I think about object orientation, and how I design systems, learning the patterns of Smalltalk makes it clear what object oriented design is really intended to achieve.

This is the defining book on the C language, written by the authors of the language and published in 1978.

By the early 1980’s it became the standard for writing systems software, helped by the fact that the UNIX operating system was written in it. UNIX grew to become the world’s dominant operating system, running over 90% of the world’s web servers. 

By the time I encountered the language I already had programmed extensively in assembler, COBOL, FORTRAN, and other languages. I had written a commercial FORTRAN compiler. The language changed my world, and this book was unique then and now for being written by the creators of the language that changed the world of programming forever.

Nothing about all the languages since C makes things better – yes, including C++. All they do is add complexity and put unnecessary constraints on language, along with continuing the focus on language… show more.

Distributed systems are everywhere now, but long before there were telephony switches, and Erlang was built to make those work.

Reading this book gave me not only an understanding about Erlang, but the language and understanding to talk and think about systems which are distributed from the beginning, not as an afterthought. For me personally Erlang/OTP is the DSL for dystributed system and the patterns implemented have applications every time I think about distributed systems now.

Not really a programming book, Modern Operating Systems has been influential for me to understand what I am working with.

When learning about how OSs do their job it is impossible to know everything, but having a rough picture and being able to know how and where to drill down further is what it is all about and this is where this book really shined for me. Even when never writing a driver or working with kernel code, knowing how the details fit together helps in estimating complexity.

The knowledge I got from this book more than once helped me recognize when something was too good to be true, or simplify complex software by working with not against the OS, in my opinion a must read for every programmer.

A tremendous amount of what makes a great videogame happens at the millisecond level. In this realm that is invisible to most, tiny changes make for enormous differences in the way a game feels. If you would master the secret rules that make for a game that people can’t put down because it just feels so good to play, you are wise to read this book. 

Getting Gamers shows us that the science of video games is the science of human interaction. In fact, some game development studios staff teams of psychologists and researchers, and sometimes those teams use virtual spaces as testing environments for psychology theories.

How does physical appearance prime social interactions (ie, the Proteus Effect), for example? With the wealth of avatar customization options available to gamers, we can carefully articulate and test our assumptions of interactions in groups using MMOs (massive multiplayer online games).

Tell your non-gaming friends: video games remind us that we are human!

Where David Sudnow’s Breakout: Pilgrim in the Microworld focused on the flamboyant poetry of gaming, Michael W. Clune’s Gamelife opts for minimalism.

Clune himself describes the book as a memoir about computer games, which is true, and that description alone warrants inclusion in my list. Why? Any topic that can be a lens through which to reflect on one’s own life is noteworthy.

Clune isn’t a game developer recounting a life spent developing games. Clune isn’t a games industry executive doling out business advice. Clune is a gamer with a childhood he’s able to better understand when filtered through video games.

Tell your non-gaming friends: video games are therapy!

I found this book so smart in the way that it examines and questions how we have made many parts of our worlds into winner-take-all competitions or “games.” I thought Jagoda did a great job making me think about “gamified” realities that simulate real-world situations and how we virtually experiment through gameplay.

I was also drawn to the idea that games could “safely” let us play out real-world scenarios, imagining and testing out new ways of trying out alternative futures without the risks of playing those for real.

At the same time, I am reminded that however simulatively real the game feels, the consequences are not similarly real. Win or lose, we can always “end” the game, reboot, and start again–not necessarily so in real life. 

This book is about being brave. You know when a problem grows into a huge scary monster, right? It’s got you cornered and you don't think you'll ever get out alive, but with the right attitude, you can. Our hero Phoenix is braver than his years, but in some ways he’s more grown-up than his dad. In this retelling of the ancient Greek story of the minotaur, who crushes mortals and eats them for breakfast, we step into a monstrous virtual world created by Phoenix’s dad. I wanted to run, but most of all I wanted to stay and see what happened next. Will the minotaur eat Phoenix alive? I related to Phoenix trying to survive and trying to work out his issues with his dad, because every one of us has to face the same difficult world and be courageous about it.

While not science fiction in the classical sense, it is a story of a different kind of world where virtual reality and reality blur. The main character almost lives in a virtual reality gaming program, but when he is to do something in the real world, he finds he can’t really tell the two apart and that leads to grave consequences.