Hadley Wickham
Statistician and software developer; chief scientist at RStudio/Posit and creator of the tidyverse of R packages.
Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming by Peter Van Roy & Seif Haridi
Another similar and also interesting book is Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming, which explains all the models of computer languages and how they fit together.
on fivebooks.com · 9 Aug 2018
Domain-Specific Languages by Martin Fowler
Partly because of another book that nearly made it onto my list: Domain-Specific Languages by Martin Fowler. It talks about the idea of writing a small language inside another language, to express ideas in a specific domain
on fivebooks.com · 9 Aug 2018
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson
But this book is very useful for somebody like me, with experience in high-level engineering languages, like VBA, PHP and R. They're incredibly useful languages, but ones that computer scientists generally disdain, because they're not theoretically pure or beautiful. This book shows you how languages can be constructed. The most valuable thing it gives you is confidence and knowledge to go and create your own programming language.
on fivebooks.com · 9 Aug 2018
Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph Bizup & Joseph M. Williams
This book gave me the tools to analyze a text and identify the reasons why it doesn't work, for example stating the topic of a paragraph only in the middle of it. I found it very useful to consciously analyze my own writing.
on fivebooks.com · 9 Aug 2018
The Algorithm Design Manual by Steven S. Skiena
To me, this book is an illustration of the power of names. Today, in the era of Google, if you know the name of something, you can find out about it with a simple search. But if you don't know of what you're looking for, it suddenly becomes much harder to find it. Having in the back of your head the names of common algorithms that help you solve problems is really powerful.
on fivebooks.com · 9 Aug 2018
The Art of Readable Code by Dustin Boswell & Trevor Foucher
What I liked about this book is that it gives you a series of techniques to make that smell go away.
on fivebooks.com · 9 Aug 2018
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas
This is about the craft of software development, and thinking about how to produce good code. As the name suggests, it's a very pragmatic and hands-on book. It really helped me on my journey as a software engineer, to be able to write quality code day in and day out, and be confident that it's going to work correctly.
on fivebooks.com · 9 Aug 2018
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