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Computer Science textbooks that are freely available online

by MrXOR on 12/29/20, 6:14 PM with 53 comments

• by ljhsiung on 12/29/20, 6:41 PM

  Their link to "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (5th edition)" (https://booksite.elsevier.com/9780123838728/references.php) is broken. Here's a couple more [1],[2].

  I'm also surprised Jeff Erickson's free lecture notes [3] aren't there given 1) its easy to remember domain 2) its incredibly high, practical quality. Practical because I've had interviews that just grab questions from the book, and also because his course is basically just a walk-through of the book. It's also very easy to read, and although I didn't do great in his class, his conceptual lessons still stick with me.

  [1] http://acs.pub.ro/~cpop/SMPA/Computer%20Architecture%20A%20Q...

  [2] https://github.com/Seanforfun/Books/blob/master/Computer/Com...

  [3] http://algorithms.wtf

• by jcynix on 12/29/20, 10:29 PM

  Not just CS books, but unglue.it offers various books, e.g.

  * Paolo Bory: The Internet Myth https://unglue.it/work/442013/

  * The Digital Public Domain: Foundations for an Open Culture https://unglue.it/work/136338/

  * Francis daCosta: Rethinking the Internet of Things (APress) https://unglue.it/work/310550/

  * Shotts: The Linux Command Line (No Starch Press) https://unglue.it/work/136224/

  * Fogel: Producing Open Source Software UT: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project https://unglue.it/work/135870/

  * Ryder: Unix as IDE https://unglue.it/work/194054/

  More at e.g.

  * https://unglue.it/free/kw.Computers%20/%20Programming/

• by pron on 12/29/20, 7:13 PM

  By no means a textbook, just a barely-edited book-length anthology of primary sources I put together, but let me plug my own:

  Finite of Sense and Infinite of Thought: A History of Computation, Logic and Algebra

  https://pron.github.io/computation-logic-algebra

• by gmfawcett on 12/29/20, 6:54 PM

  An obligatory mention of the /r/csbooks subreddit, where we share titles like these:

  https://www.reddit.com/r/csbooks/

• by asicsp on 12/30/20, 4:31 AM

  All my ebooks are free to read online: https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course#ebooks

  And here's a huge list of freely available programming books: https://ebookfoundation.github.io/free-programming-books/boo...

• by st1x7 on 12/29/20, 8:54 PM

  Thanks for sharing, this is great.

  It's also a bit intimidating and overhwelming. There is so much to learn and there is also a danger of just getting through textbooks that cover the same material that you've read before or covering stuff on a surface level without getting any practice with what you've learned. As a data scientist, it feels like anything from mathematics, computer science, statistics, large-scale systems, software engineering in general is within my domain and there is a real danger of spreading oneself a bit too thin and not getting that good at anything.

• by ipodopt on 12/29/20, 7:28 PM

  In the vein's shadow:

  [audio books] http://audiobookbay.nl/

  [books] http://gen.lib.rus.ec/

  [research papers] https://sci-hub.do/

• by riknos314 on 12/29/20, 8:31 PM

  Runestone academy has a good collection of interactive online textbooks https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/index

  Disclaimer: I helped build this platform as a student

• by irateswami on 12/29/20, 6:42 PM

  I had a lot of qualms with my CS education, the professors in particular, but I have to hand it to them they always either tried to have the book and material online for free, or would use the international edition of whatever textbook we needed. Textbooks, and higher education in general, are a complete ripoff for 90% of people doing it.

• by boxmonster on 12/29/20, 11:48 PM

  I suggest adding Bob Nystrom's "Crafting Interpreters"

  http://craftinginterpreters.com/

• by WalterBright on 12/29/20, 10:58 PM

  "Programming in D - Tutorial and Reference" Ali Çehreli

  http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/index.html

• by rckoepke on 12/29/20, 7:36 PM

  https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/index has 100% free interactive versions of high quality textbooks. They use a JavaScript implementation of Python which runs in the browser (Skulpt) to provide a REPL.

  Example Textbooks: Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures using Python (3rd edition)

• by subset on 12/30/20, 8:07 AM

  I also really enjoyed MIT's "Mathematics for Computer Science" by Lehman, Leighton & Meyer (http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.042/spring18/mcs.pdf)

• by brogrammer2018 on 12/30/20, 4:55 AM

  The best list: https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/bl...

• by teleforce on 12/30/20, 6:04 AM

  Nice list thanks.

  Perhaps you can add "High Performance Browser Networking" in your networking book section:

  https://hpbn.co/

• by jagger27 on 12/29/20, 7:38 PM

  https://opendatastructures.org/ is quite good.

• by bluenose69 on 12/29/20, 10:24 PM

  It strikes me as odd that these resources are listed by title, not by author. In my (natural science) field, it's very much the reverse. I wonder whether this is a disciplinary difference, or just a reflection of Gordon's preference.

• by deflox on 12/30/20, 11:55 AM

  "Eloquent Javascript" might also be a candidate for this list but it is only available to read online: https://eloquentjavascript.net

• by mathieubordere on 12/30/20, 9:24 AM

  "The Little Book of Semaphores" also belongs here.

  https://greenteapress.com/wp/semaphores/

• by low_common on 12/29/20, 6:40 PM

  Really helped me out when I was getting my CS degree. Some classes I'd use these free copies, but core classes ex. Algorithms I liked having the physical copy of CLRS.

• by ipodopt on 12/29/20, 7:25 PM

  In the same vein: https://github.com/ossu/computer-science

• by amir734jj on 12/29/20, 7:32 PM

  Kind of unrelated, I am wondering does anyone know a good CS lecture note websites? There was a one I saw here few months ago but I forgot the URL.

• by aronpye on 12/29/20, 8:03 PM

  I wish these lists were better curated rather than just a dump of links with no commentary.

• by 2fourk on 1/4/21, 3:34 AM

  This is a great post, so many good resources and information!!!

• by boblivion on 12/29/20, 7:30 PM

  https://toc.cryptobook.us/ A comprehensive introduction to provable cryptography that is comparatively modern.

• by pyfan878 on 12/29/20, 11:40 PM

  algorithms illuminated isn't freely available. The links forward to amazon.

• by blackrock on 12/29/20, 11:17 PM

  How do you read your ebooks?

  Anyone have any success using the reMarkable 2 for it?

• by adilsardar on 12/30/20, 7:30 AM

  Thank you for sharing this kind of information. It really helps other people :)

• by blackrock on 12/29/20, 7:20 PM

  Fascinating list. Thanks.