Guidelines - Githubissues

Here are some ideas/guidelines to evaluate books about technology (but not literature):

General principles instead of specific technologies
- Example: "Relational Databases" instead of "MySQL" or "PostgreSQL"
- Exceptions: technologies that became standards with multiple implementations: C, UNIX, etc.
Technical instead of pop science
- Example: "The Elements of Computing Systems" instead of "But How Do It Know?" (which I assume is intended for a general audience)
Comprehensive instead of partial
- Example: "The Art of Computer Programming" instead of "Everyday Data Structures"
Unique instead of redundant
- We don't need several books about each topic.
- If you have to pick one, pick the most general, technical and comprehensive :)
Optional, but recommended: include official standards when possible
- Examples:
  - W3 standards (HTTP, HTML, XML, CSS, etc)
  - ECMAScript (a.k.a. "Javascript")
  - C18
  - Scheme R6RS
  - Java Virtual Machine
  - etc.
- Note: We should still include books about each one of these topics; but the standards can be used as reference.

I also propose the following changes in the structure:

Split "Fundamentals of computing" and "the Internet":
- "Fundamentals of computing"
- Move "the internet" to "Networking"
Split "Compilers, Assembler and Operating systems":
- "Compilers and Interpreters"
- "Operating Systems"
- Move "Assembler" to "Programming Languages".

With that in mind, here's a shorter list of books for sections 1 to 7:

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold (Pearson Education)
The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles by Noam Nisan (MIT Press)

Optional:

Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools by Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, Jeffrey D. Ullman (Addison-Wesley)
Modern Compiler Implementation in C by Andrew W. Appel, Maia Ginsburg (Cambridge University Press)
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, by Abelson, Sussman, and Sussman (MIT Press)

Optional:

Assembly: Programming from the Ground Up by Jonathan Bartlett (GNU Free Documentation License)
Forth: A sometimes minimal FORTH compiler and tutorial for Linux / i386 systems, by Richard W.M. Jones (PUBLIC DOMAIN)
C: C Programming Language, by K&R (Pearson)
C++: C++ Programming Language, by Bjarne Stroustrup (Pearson)
Scheme: How to Design Programs, by Matthias Felleisen (MIT Press, Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND)

Optional:

Modern Operating Systems by Andrew S. Tanenbaum (Pearson PLC)
Operating Systems: Design and Implementation by Andrew S. Tanenbaum (Prentice Hall)
Operating System Concepts, by Abraham Silberschatz (Willey)
Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, by W. Richard Stevens (Addison-Wesley Professional)
The Art of Unix Programming by Eric S. Raymond (Addison-Wesley, but also available under a Creative Commons license)

Optional:

A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks, by E.F.Codd (IBM Research Laboratory)
An Introduction to Database Systems, by C.J. Date (Pearson)
Fundamentals of Database Systems, by Ramez Elmasri (Pearson)

Cabling: The Complete Guide To Copper and Fiber-Optic Networking by Andrew Oliviero and Bill Woodward (Wiley)
Ethernet: The Definitive Guide by Charles E. Spurgeon and Joann Zimmerman (O'Reilly)
TCP/IP Illustrated (volumes 1-3), by Richard Stevens (Addison-Wesley Professional)
DNS and BIND by Cricket Liu and Paul Albitz (O'Reilly)
HTTP: The Definitive Guide by David Gourley, Brian Totty, Marjorie Sayer, Anshu Aggarwal, and Sailu Reddy (O'Reilly)
Computer Networks, by Andrew S. Tanenbaum (Pearson)

Before adding a book, ask yourself: is book about general principles? Is it technical? Is it comprehensive? Does it provide unique information?

github / archive-program