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Alan Kay Book Recommendations
Alan Kay is an American computer scientist.
(Read more on Wikipedia)14 Books Recommended
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A Programming Language
by Kenneth E. Iverson
"This has the same thought expanding properties of Lisp." - Alan Kay (Source)
The Art of the Metaobject Protocol
by Gregor Kiczales
"A real gem for helping to think about design and implementations." - Alan Kay (Source)
The Sciences of the Artificial
by Herbert A Simon
"A much stronger way to think about computing — and what 'Computer Science' might mean." - Alan Kay (Source)
The Principia
The Authoritative Translation and Guide: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
by Isaac Newton
"I have never forgotten the combined shock and thrill of making my way through this in my 20s." - Alan Kay (Source)
Also recommended by:
LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual
by John McCarthy
"I have called this the 'Maxwell’s Equations' of computing, because it presents a very large part of what’s important about programming languages." - Alan Kay (Source)
Computation
Finite and Infinite Machines
by Marvin Lee Minsky
"It is actually a 'math book' — with lots of ideas, theorems, proofs, etc., — but presented in the friendliest way imaginable by a great mind." - Alan Kay (Source)
The Mythical Man-Month
Essays on Software Engineering
by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
"An early look and experience with timeless truths (and gotchas) from systems building with teams" - Alan Kay (Source)
Also recommended by:
Mythology
by Edith Hamilton
"A few more books like this, and by the time I got to first grade I had been ruined for the 'single book - single truth' ideas of school and church." - Alan Kay (Source)
Molecular Biology of the Cell
by Bruce Alberts
"For many years it has been the best single volume narrative of 'life from scratch.'" - Alan Kay (Source)
Also recommended by:
20000 Leagues Under the Sea
Voyages Extraordinaires, Book 7
by Jules Verne
"A formative book in so many ways." - Alan Kay (Source)
Also recommended by:
Art in the Blood
A Sherlock Holmes Adventure
by Bonnie MacBird
"[My wife] completely nailed the Arthur Conan Doyle voice of the characters and narrative, while being able to carry a marvelous story into the much larger realm of the novel." - Alan Kay (Source)
Advances in Programming and Non-Numerical Computation
by L Fox
"One of the books that Bob Barton had us read in his famous advanced systems design class in 1967." - Alan Kay (Source)
