37 books like The Elements of Computing Systems

This book gave me a new framework for thinking about how political change happens and how technology shapes our society. It analyzes how social media platforms like Facebook have helped antiauthoritarian movements achieve dazzling success almost overnight—and how those platforms have weakened and endangered those same movements. I loved that this book was clear and readable without oversimplifying the topic. It showed—as Tufecki writes, quoting another scholar—that “technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”

This isn’t exactly a book about computer systems, but I decided to include it because it gave me a deeper understanding of how technological and social systems influence each other—which I hope will change how I write software myself.

One of the best ways to understand how software works is to study how it fails. When I was just starting my career in software security, I read this book to learn about binary exploits like buffer overflows. It’s been a long time since I’ve written a binary exploit, but digging into the nitty-gritty, low-level details of how software runs on a real system has helped with everything I’ve done as an engineer since.

A lot has changed since this book was published in 2008 (and running the accompanying Live CD has gotten trickier), but the fundamental concepts are as relevant as ever.

This isn’t a technical book, but it gets to the heart of why so much software is fragile and insecure. This book examines spectacular failures of all sorts, from nuclear meltdowns to plane crashes to oil spills, but I loved it because its message resonated with my own experience writing and debugging code. It argues that complex, tightly coupled systems involving hidden interactions and close coordination between lots of different parts are more likely to fail catastrophically. It also talks about strategies to make those systems safer, like doing “premortems,” getting advice from outsiders, and building diverse teams.

My big takeaway? Technical solutions alone won’t make software (or other complex systems) safer. We need to change how we build and how our organizations work, too.

Although I don’t work in government, this is a book I’ll come back to whenever I need a reminder to put user needs ahead of process or wisdom about how to work inside a large bureaucracy to make that happen. Where Meltdown focuses on spectacular blow-ups, this book explores run-of-the-mill failures—like long, complicated online forms and websites that only load in specific, outdated browsers. (Though bigger failures, like the launch of healthcare.gov, get airtime too.)

I appreciated this book’s thoughtful analysis of how government software gets built—it goes beyond the stereotype of the incompetent government employee and digs into the underlying reasons that even competent and dedicated public servants can struggle to deliver critical software. Many of those reasons apply to private companies, too. 

The fields of Psychology, Economics, and Biology are well-known for offering interesting and informative introductory courses that provide a doorway into the area for budding scientists but also essential background knowledge appropriate for any educated person.

In Computer Science, we don't really do things that way. I wanted to offer a new kind of Computer Science introductory course that laid out the coolest ideas we have to offer along with compelling descriptions of why they matter.

I ended up using this book as the required reading in the class I built because it tells a personal, moving story while taking the reader from the nuts and bolts of bits and bytes all the way up to cutting-edge ideas surrounding artificial intelligence. It's a great read! Plus, it's short so I thought I could get my students to actually finish it.

This book provides a brief introduction to the concept of algorithms before discussing the limitations of computation. Specifically, Harel explains undecidable problems (that is, problems for which no algorithm exists) and infeasible problems (that is, problems for which only algorithms are known that have an exponential runtime). I like this book (and its splendid title) because of its focus on the limitations of computation. Harel does a marvelous job in explaining two difficult topics about computation. The understanding of any scientific discipline requires the understanding of its limits, and the limits of computation are as significant as they are surprising.

This thin but quite fulfilling book is a compact yet profound exploration of proven program correctness, probably one of the first texts to focus on that topic.

Dijkstra's emphasis on mathematical rigor and disciplined thinking reshapes how programmers approach problem-solving. The author imparts essential principles of program construction, advocating for clarity and precision in code, and leading to cultivating a disciplined mindset, and fostering a deep appreciation for the art and science of programming.

Despite its age, all its knowledge is fully valid, and I’d give the book to every programmer so they can reach a higher level of quality.

This book was written in the late 60s, when everything was breaking loose from traditional values, including writing styles. Brunner did a very good job of anticipating how technology and changing social norms would change the world in the not-so-distant future.

It's all there: sexual freedom, legal drugs, religion, computers, crazy mass killers called muckers, corporate empires, a 7 billion population, global events, and the personalized internet.

I like the way the story was written, a new wave pop art style intermixed with traditional passages blaring out a series of seemingly unrelated events that are strung together by a group of unrelated characters who carry the complex story through to a surprising ending.

I fell in love with this book as a young graduate school student at the University of Iowa. Curled up in my tiny 500-square-foot apartment, I devoured the book, not realizing morning had turned into afternoon and then evening.

At a time in the early 2000s when "serious" scholarship largely included Black people using technology in condescending and pathologizing ways, I read Everett sharply responding with counter-evidence of Black publics' involvement at every turn of media developments.

The book, I remember, made me feel like writing a counter-history that places "us" at the center is not only possible but transformational.

This weighty tome delves deep into the low-level working of computer programs.

This book is a great resource for professional programmers who work close to the machine in such fields as embedded software, cybersecurity, and device drivers. Assuming a basic knowledge of the C language, Bryant and O’Hallaron, two CMU professors, teach how to read and understand compiled code, how to optimize it for better performance, and how to avoid common pitfalls.

This is a hard-core technical book, written by engineers for engineers, in a dense style that is nonetheless accessible and practical. I like the numerous applied problems, each accompanied by a worked-out solution.