Some Old Books and Blocks of Paper

I was reminded today about my stash of old computing books that I’ve held onto for various reason.

I have a set of books from my 3 university modules on Formal Aspects of Computer Science and my final year dissertation. I keep these because they were the only element of my degree that I found remotely interesting or enjoyable. I found these books the be genuinely enlightening. Until they become too difficult.

The Dijkstra, Hoare, and Hehner books in particular, were a joy to study and I’m unlikely to ever relinquish these.

The K&R is worth keeping if only because it’s famous and for the recursive index entry.

Code Complete was given to me by my boss in my first developer job and I didn’t know I still had it.

The same goes for the serial comms book and it’s unlikely to survive the next book cull.

The ANSI C book was the first book I bought as a university student and I still have it for that reason alone. It was required reading and expensive, I assume the professor was on commission (there were a few cheeky sods that made buying their own books a requirement). This too, is unlikely to survive much longer.

The final 3 were gifts from my mother for getting a university place, first in the family and all that. The Database and Algorithm books are really very nice books to have, the last one is a block of paper.