The most recommended computer programming books

This book is different from the others I recommended, because its focus is not really on creating algorithms, but rather on how to improve code with a systematic process, keeping functionality but enhancing quality.

The author shows several practical techniques that he applies to real-world problems and empower you to elevate your code's quality and adapt it seamlessly to changing needs. It's not just about writing code; it's about becoming a more effective and confident developer.

I consider this book a companion on the journey to mastering the craft of coding. With it, you’ll always be able to achieve higher-quality code, no matter the original version of the code.

My last choice is about a musical girl who finds a very different kind of “instrument” to play!

Twelve-year-old Emmy just moved from Wisconsin to San Francisco for her dad’s big break as a pianist. Emmy wants to be a musician, too, but can’t find the right instrument to play (I can relate!).

Notes and classical terms are in her head, but not her fingers in this novel-in-verse. Instead of music as an elective, Emmy ends up in computer science and makes friends with a quiet girl named Abigail.

Emmy learns java script, and the reader learns along with her. In the end, Emmy finds a way to make her own kind of music through computer coding.

Okay, hear me out. Yes, this book was published in 2007. Yes, it’s ostensibly about ActionScript, the coding language in Flash, which no one uses anymore. But you won’t use this book to learn ActionScript or Flash: You’ll use it to learn how to make things move with code, in any language. You’ll skip over the ActionScript-specific parts in favor of the lucid explanations and helpful illustrations. Your visual brain will appreciate seeing how sines, cosines, and tangents are relevant—and necessary!—to make digital things move. (Your heart will wish your brain had paid better attention in trigonometry class years earlier, but hey, no regrets!) The chapters “Trigonometry for Animation” and “Velocity and Acceleration” alone are worth the purchase price.

If you want your interactive graphics to feel like they are real objects—real things moving around on the screen—then you have to learn how to mimic the natural world. For an object to feel like it has weight, you have to mimic gravity. For a flock of birds to feel real, you have to mimic how real birds swarm in the sky. Yes, this does involve little math. But fortunately, Dan is a superstar teacher, and he will gently walk you through (a) the math and (b) how to translate that math into code.

Speaking of code, this book uses Processing.js, which is an older adaptation of original Processing to JavaScript. That said, the techniques are all equally applicable to modern-day Processing and p5.js.

I used this book for several years starting in 2013 when the first edition came out. It absolutely holds up today. Learning the Python language (the syntax) is one thing. Learning how to design programs using this syntax is another. We need both but, unfortunately, many books forgo the latter for the former. Not this book! I like the Problem Solving and Worked Example sections: they help learners apply a disciplined, step-by-step strategy to programming projects. There are multiple, varied contexts here as well, which helps capture a broader base of learners. Bonus feature: the Computing & Society boxes.

Lisp will always have a special place in my brain, not language can be as expressive and molded to what the programmer wants to do in my opinion.

Learning a programming language can be a bit dry, but not in the case of Land of Lisp, honestly I just found this book to be fun from beginning to end, and even so I was already familiar with Lisp before reading it I actually followed all the way through not skipping a page.

Yes Lisp is hardly in use these days, but if you know it you will find its concepts popping up all over the place and this is why knowing it is so useful.

This book changed my life. Known simply as “the blue book” in creative coding circles, I discovered this in a bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., just blocks from where Casey and Ben had created Processing at MIT (and then wrote this book). It opened me up to Processing—their programming language for artists and designers—but also to code as a creative medium. Until then, I saw code as a dry, tedious way to fight with computers. Now I know that code can be just as expressive, engaging, and emotional as prose and poetry.

While the syntax in this book is for Processing (which you can download and run on your computer for free), the concepts are equally applicable to p5.js (which runs in a web browser, also for free).

Even though this book is a bit older, I had a ton of fun doing the programming problems in this book. This book really makes you think outside the box as a programmer and try to solve various problems in different ways depending on what you are trying to optimize for.

I really learned a lot about not just solving a problem, but solving a problem for a specific set of goals. Overall it made me a better programmer and made me think more deeply about programming problems.

If you want to improve your problem-solving skills and have fun doing it, I would definitely recommend this book.

Knuth is perhaps the true founder of Computer Science, who set out in the late 1960s to produce a seven-volume series of books containing all the foundations of the discipline.

Three volumes appeared by 1973, after which he got distracted by many other things, and the promised volumes seemed destined never to emerge. But Knuth finished Volume 4A in 2011, after a lapse of 35 years. And then, in the Fall of 2022, at the age of 84, he published the 712-page Volume 4B: Combinatorial Algorithms Part II!

There is nothing in the world like a Knuth book. He has a unique way of looking at the world and an unrivaled sense of detail and humor. He goes deeper down rabbit holes than any man alive, and you come out smarter and with a sense of wonder that such books really exist.

Volume 4B is dedicated to combinatorial search algorithms,… show more.

Al is one of the clearest writers on Python that I know. Here he distills his experience as both a working software engineer and a successful author to take coders from advanced beginner/intermediate level on to all of the “extra” knowledge one needs to write good code for practical use. When I read this book I find myself wishing I could write with such simplicity.