Reading List

The HacDC Reading list, featuring the finest hacker tomes. (If you have ideas on how to organize, categorize, and linkize these, use the discussion page. I've avoided adding too much detail, so as to minimize the amount of work that will need to be done to re-arrange the list once a more useful organization scheme is hatched.)

Non-Fiction

Biography & History

• The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling.
• In the beginning was the command line by Neal Stephenson

Electronics

• Fashioning Technology: A DIY Intro to Smart Crafting by Syuzi Pakhchyan
• Getting Started in Electronics by Forrest Mims

A very readable and nearly mathematics free guide to electronics components and schematics. There are many small projects that can be completed in a single evening of work.

• Engineer's Notebook by Forrest Mims

Continues where Getting Started in Electronics ends and has many cookbook solutions to common tasks. If you've seen the Radio Shack "Mini notebooks", this is a compilation of all of them.

• Practical Electronics for Inventors by Paul Scherz

Similar in to Forrest Mims' books, but with more theory and math. Lots of analog circuits and discrete logic examples.

Computers

• Write Great Code Volume 1: Understanding the machine

Excellent introduction to computer architecture. This is a guide to understanding how CPUs and memory hierarchies work, how numbers are represented, how arrays are laid out, and so on.

• Write Great Code Volume 2: Thinking low-level, writing high-level

Almost better than Volume 1, this one focuses on how to write better code by understanding what the CPU, memory and compiler are doing underneath all of the syntactic sugar provided by high-level languages. Very important information for anyone writing in a high level language (like C) for embedded systems (like the AVR).

• The Pragmatic Programmer

Language independent guidelines for writing better code, working better with development groups and management, and avoiding common problems.

• Hackers and Painters

Fiction

Science Fiction

• Neuromancer by William Gibson
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
• The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
• Halting State by Charles Stross
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson