r/compsci · 2021

Most-mentioned books in r/compsci during 2021

This page ranks books by exact tracked mentions in r/compsci within the published source unit for 2021. Counts come from the reconciled subreddit-by-month matrix; a source unit may be a bounded sample.

Books ranked

Tracked mentions in 2021

Sort by upvotes = sum of comment scores on recognized mentions

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Harold Abelson

Six chapters into Scheme, you're writing an interpreter for a language you invented an hour ago.

10 in 2021

The Art of Computer Programming

Donald E. Knuth

Four volumes of algorithms and combinatorics Donald Knuth started in 1962 and still hasn't finished, cited more often than it's actually read.

5 in 2021

Designing Data-Intensive Applications

Martin Kleppmann

Martin Kleppmann walks backend engineers through every database, queue, and consistency tradeoff they'll eventually get paged about.

3 in 2021

Introduction to Algorithms

Thomas H. Cormen

A course syllabus gets posted, and a Redditor recognizes it as nothing but this book's chapter headings in disguise.

3 in 2021

The Soul of a New Machine

Tracy Kidder

A journalist embeds with Data General's engineers racing on no sleep to ship a new minicomputer before the deadline kills the project.

3 in 2021

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

Charles Petzold

Charles Petzold builds a working computer from a doorbell, a flashlight, and a length of wire, then keeps going until it's running software.

2 in 2021

Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach

James F. Kurose

The book people cite when they're tired of the acronyms and want to know what actually happens between their laptop and a server.

2 in 2021

Modern Operating Systems

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

A 1,000-page walkthrough of how an operating system actually works, kept on the shelf for the week before a systems interview.

2 in 2021

TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1

W. Richard Stevens

You run tcpdump on a mystery connection and finally understand every line it prints, packet by packet.

2 in 2021

#10

The C Programming Language

Brian W. Kernighan

Two authors write the book that becomes 'K&R,' and forty years later Reddit still uses it as shorthand for programmers who had to know everything themselves.

2 in 2021

#11

The Pragmatic Programmer

Andy Hunt

Two working programmers write down the shop habits senior engineers use so junior ones stop reinventing them badly.

2 in 2021

#12

Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective

Randal E. Bryant

The machine underneath the machine: assembly, memory, and the OS layer that 'just learn C' never actually explains.

1 in 2021

#13

The Phoenix Project

Gene Kim

A struggling IT VP inherits a doomed project, a company on the edge of collapse, and one coworker who has quietly become the company's entire bottleneck.

1 in 2021