Best Computer Science Books – Into the Software and Beyond

Recommended by Bogdan Iordache (Co-Founder/How to Web)

Source: Bogdan Iordache: Recommended Books and Learnings

It's important that we make this transformation, because of what Clayton Christensen calls "the innovator's dilemma," where people who invent something are usually the last ones to see past it, and we certainly don't want to be left behind.

Steve Jobs

Founder/Apple

This book is written by the founder of Pixar and is about his experience building a culture that fosters creativity.

His theory is that people are fundamentally creative, but many forces stand in the way of people being able to do their best work.

I love reading first-hand accounts about how people build great companies like Pixar and nurture innovation and creativity. This should be inspiring to anyone looking to do the same, and hopefully there will be lessons we can apply to connecting the world!

Mark Zuckerberg

CEO/Facebook

Entrepreneurial professionals must develop a competitive advantage by building valuable skills. This book offers advice based on research and reality--not meaningless platitudes-- on how to invest in yourself in order to stand out from the crowd. An important guide to starting up a remarkable career.

Reid Hoffman

CEO/Linkedin

Now this one is certainly a little less historical than the others, if only because most of the profiles are about companies founded in the last ten years. Written by Jessica Livingston, a founder of YCombinator, the book profiles some of the hottest and most successful startups in Silicon Valley history. It shows how the founders manage to create massive growth, usually with very few resources. Now I’m not saying that companies like Hot or Not compare with the accomplishments of Pericles or Da Vinci, but you can certainly see how this book captures a moment in time—and its leading men and women—and what that means. This is the most current book on the list (besides mine) but I think many of you will like it. Plus you can learn a lot about the tech scene in one swoop.

Ryan Holiday

Founder/Brass Check

The unassuming Georgetown computer science professor has become one of this generation’s leading voices on how we can all work more wisely and more deeply. With media consumption continuing to go way up (which, for most of us, means happiness and productivity continue to go way down) and the world becoming noisier every day, this book is an urgent call to action for anyone serious about being in command of their own life. The minimalism movement successfully led millions to opt out of the many possessions we’re told we’re supposed to crave and focus instead on the small number of things that bring the most meaning and value to our lives. The same ideology applies to our online lives. Digital clutter is stressful. We don’t need the constant connectivity, the pages and pages of apps, the incessant scrolling and clicking. New technologies can improve our lives if we know how to best leverage them. This book already helped me break my Facebook addiction—and the first month of the year has been a big improvement for me because of that.

Ryan Holiday

Media Strategist, Author, Founder/Brass Check

When asked what books he would recommend to young people interested in his career path, Emi Gal mentioned Algorithms to Live By.

Emi Gal

CEO/Teads Studio

If you have to work with programmers, it’s essential to understand that programming has a culture. This book will help you understand what programmers do, how they do it, and why. It decodes the culture of code.

Kevin Kelly

Author, Founding executive editor/Wired

The Simulation Hypothesis presents a radical alternative to current models of reality. Riz Virk’s book, relying his unique experience designing digital games, results in a stunning reappraisal of what it means to be human in an infinite universe.

Jacques Vallée

Scientist, VC, author

I read "The Last Lecture" because I had seen Randy Pausch give this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Gabriel Coarna

Founder/Readable

If my career path is hackers turned business people, I’d say:

Start with the basics and fundamentals:

• SICP: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
• Code Complete 2

Santiago Basulto

Co-Founder/rmotr.com

AI is finally here, from guiding us home on Waze, to helping us choose a restaurant, a book or a job. I believe this will launch a Renaissance of human creativity as mundane tasks become handled by AI. Kartik Hosanagar’s excellent book identifies the growing pains we may experience along the way to this new human advancement.

Tim Draper

Founder/Draper Fisher Jurvetson

For every minute you spend inside this book, you'll get back ten. Off the Clock will show you how to spend your hours more meaningfully, reclaim vast amounts of wasted time, and live a better life. Picking up this book will be one of the most valuable investments you make in yourself.

Chris Bailey

Creator/A Life of Productivity

Recommended by Fabrice Grinda (Serial Entrepreneur, Investor)

Source: Serial Entrepreneur & Investor Fabrice Grinda Reads Almost 100 Books Each Year

This book really showed me the amazing pathways that led to innovations that make our lives work today. The stories are told almost like a dramatic mystery to make the history come to life with excitement and aha moments.

Bill Gross

Founder/Idealab

If my career path is hackers turned business people, I’d say:

Start with the basics and fundamentals:

• SICP: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
• Code Complete 2

Santiago Basulto

Co-Founder/rmotr.com

More a set of reports and reflections, in his new book John Brockman assembles twenty-five of the most important scientific minds, for an unparalleled round-table examination about mind, thinking, intelligence and what it means to be human. A must read!

Gerd Leonhard

Futurist

Right now I am reading:

• The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth's Past) by Cixin Liu

and

• The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts by Gary Chapman
• Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies by Arvind Narayanan, Joseph Bonneau, Edward Felten, Andrew Miller, Steven Goldfeder

Antonio Eram

Founder & CEO/NETOPIA mobilPay

Prior to reading the book I had never considered that a career in software development would be an option for me. My parents both grew up poor and chose career paths that would get them to a middle-class salary with the least amount of training. I lived on the outer edge of the suburbs in Georgia and I don’t think I’d met a single computer programmer prior to college. We had an old Packard Bell computer capable of running the original Sim City that eventually caught on fire around the time I read this book. [...] I don’t think I would have picked computer science as my major without the familiarity that I’d had with my own laptop and from the familiarity of the lifestyle outlined in Microserfs.

Alison Alvarez

Co-Founder & CEO/Blastpoint.io

I’m reading “On intelligence” by Jeff Hawkins. I am really enjoying it. It’s a very specific theory of how our brain learns and makes predictions (the root of our intelligence) explained for average people unfamiliar with the field. It’s also very related to computer science and artificial intelligence since it tried to prove the current approaches to those are flawed. I’m getting a better understanding of how our brain works and how does our behaviour affects our thinking as much as our thinking affects our behaviour. Thus, it’s interesting to connect it with the idea of habits and how we can really benefit from them.

Joan Boixados

Founder/everydayCheck

Whether you are a business leader, policy maker, or entrepreneur, you need to understand Artificial Intelligence and its power to shape our future. In his brilliantly written book, Amir Husain, one of the world's leading AI experts, will help you gain that understanding.

John Chambers

CEO/Cisco

Gordon Bell is now one of the senior researchers of Microsoft. He did several projects about living with a full recording of your life. In this book he reports about that. He is one of the fathers of computer science. I've been tracking him for fifteen years.

Phil Libin

CEO/Evernote

Philosophy has been under severe challenge from science, literally eating up its provinces: philosophy of mind went to neuroscience; philosophy of language to Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science,etc. This book shows that there is a need for someone to just specialize in the TRUTH, its scructure, its accessibility, its INVARIANCE.

Aside from the purely philosophical answers that scientists were grappling with, the book is like a manual for a new regimen in philosophy. It reviews everything from epistemology to the logic of contingency, with insights here and there about such topics as the observer biases (about computing probabilities when our existence has been linked to a particular realization of the process).

I am not a philosopher but a probabilist; I found that this book just spoke to me. It certainly rid me of my prejudice against modern philosophers.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Flaneur

If you know someone who thinks they're a victim of their circumstances, inspire them with this book.

Simon Sinek

Best-selling Author

Recommended by Antonio Eram (Founder & CEO/NETOPIA mobilPay)

Source: Antonio Eram, Founder of NETOPIA mobilPay, Shares the Books that Help Him Change, Rediscover, Reshape

Recommended by Dominic Steil (CTO/Dapps Inc)

Source: Blockchain Books & Myths: Interview with Dominic Steil, CTO of Dapps Inc

Autonomous weapons aren’t exactly top of mind for most around the holidays, but this thought-provoking look at A.I. in warfare is hard to put down. It’s an immensely complicated topic, but Scharre offers clear explanations and presents both the pros and cons of machine-driven warfare. His fluency with the subject should come as no surprise: he’s a veteran who helped draft the U.S. government’s policy on autonomous weapons.

Bill Gates

Founder/Microsoft

While I was thinking of the best books to add to this short list, I realized that not even half of them are directly related to digital marketing. This is because I believe that the best marketers are people who understand human nature deeply and aim to bring out the best in it. Call me naive, but that’s how I see it. If I were to want to pursue a career in marketing, I’d read [...] The Shallows.

Andra Zaharia

Freelance Content Marketer/The Content Habit

Thing Explainer is filled with cool basic knowledge about how the world works. If one of Munroe’s drawings inspires you to go learn more about a subject—including a few extra terms—then he will have done his job. He has written a wonderful guide for curious minds.

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft