> The majority of the book was about detailed optimization for the 8088 and 8086, yet it was published when the 80486 was showing up in high-end desktop PCs.
The book goes all the way up to discussing the 386. It's just that the foundations is rooted in 8086, which is a large chunk of the book.
My favorite books (or the ones I have spend most time with) and that have been most formative for me are:
Mastering Turbo Assembler by Tom Swan
Zen of Graphics Programming by Michael Abrash
The Zen Of Assembly Language by Michael Abrash
Programmer's Guide to the EGA, VGA, and Super VGA Cards by Richard F. Ferraro
The Indispensable PC Hardware Book by Hans-Peter Messmer
I would also recommend Higher Order Perl. I went through it this summer after a recommendation. I don't know Perl, and found it was more focused on practical functional programming techniques, and provides creative and interesting justification for its topics, which can be rewritten in other languages too. Great book.
“This is also one of the most bizarrely delayed technical book releases I can recall. The majority of the book was about detailed optimization for the 8088 and 8086…”
I’m starting work on the (tentatively titled) “The Second Book of KIM.”
Software Design for Flexibility (2021)
This book left the deepest impression on me.
I was fascinated by the concept of additive programming. Personally, I spent a good while thinking about and studying the idea of "evolvability."
True, the overuse of flexibility can obscure control flow, and opinions on the book are divided but I learned many concepts from it. Since I often work on maintaining and modifying legacy code, this book was a great help.
My impression was the opinions on SDF aren't divided so much as most of the scant reviewers were unprepared to grok this book. As much as people like to cite SICP, "Advanced SICP" flew totally under the radar.
The book goes all the way up to discussing the 386. It's just that the foundations is rooted in 8086, which is a large chunk of the book.
My favorite books (or the ones I have spend most time with) and that have been most formative for me are:
Mastering Turbo Assembler by Tom Swan
Zen of Graphics Programming by Michael Abrash
The Zen Of Assembly Language by Michael Abrash
Programmer's Guide to the EGA, VGA, and Super VGA Cards by Richard F. Ferraro
The Indispensable PC Hardware Book by Hans-Peter Messmer
https://hop.perl.plover.com/
Some other great low flying titles:
The Computational Beauty of Nature by Gary William Flake
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262561273/the-computational-bea...
The Nature of Computation by Cristopher Moore and Stephan Mertens.
https://nature-of-computation.org/
Algorithms by S. Dasgupta, C.H. Papadimitriou, and U.V. Vazirani
https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~dasgupta/book/index.html
and On Lisp, of course:
https://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html
Five Memorable Books About Programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3917165 - May 2012 (1 comment)
Five Memorable Books About Programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=128054 - March 2008 (14 comments)
Show HN: The rarest tech books and docs you've probably never read(https://readrare.com/)
191 points|miletus|29 days ago|67 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50024055
I’m starting work on the (tentatively titled) “The Second Book of KIM.”
The Art of the Metaobject Protocol by Gregor Kiczales et al
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4088774W/The_art_of_the_meta...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_the_Metaobject_Prot...
That happened to me when I read The Little Schemer.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262560993/the-little-schemer/
(The other time was when I saw a Hasui)
https://ukiyo-e.org/artist/kawase-hasui
The Seasoned Schemer
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262561006/the-seasoned-schemer/
(and we can finish with our own review)