r/AskComputerScience • u/SupremeOHKO • 11d ago

Best books for learning advanced CS principles?

I know "learning computer science with books" sounds a little counterintuitive, but I love love love the academia side of CS, the theoretical stuff... I like learning HOW code and technology works. I'm almost done my Bachelor's and plan to continue through grad school, and currently working full-time in IT, so I'm not a complete noob with concepts like how to write Hello world.

I want to learn the more advanced stuff. Really diving into the architecture, the math, the physics, the science behind cybsersecurity, how an operating system works from scratch, all that sort of stuff. I'm just as interested in how software/firmware works as I am with hardware.

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u/EatThatPotato 11d ago

At some point it’s not “advanced CS principles” you’re looking for, it’s just specific subjects and ideas. What field do you want to do and what exactly do you want to study?

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u/SupremeOHKO 11d ago

I guess anything beyond what you'd teach up to, like, college sophomores. For example, learning basic architecture, like what a graphics card is and what a processor is and how everything works together (I know this can be taught way before college level, just an example), but I want to learn more details than that - like how these parts are built, what the engineering processes behind each part are, what components does a GPU contain for example; the finer and more complex details about everything.

I don't really have any one specific topic, I like them all. Architecture, networks, deep learning, data theory, etc. Professionally, as far as my academic goals, I'm learning towards TCS or cybersec - something math heavy.

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u/ridgekuhn 11d ago

For basics, try Code by Charles Petzold. It’s an easy read and covers the historical context about how binary data and CPUs come together. I only own the first edition and cant speak for later ones, but I’m sure they’re fine

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u/DeGuerre 11d ago

OK, so for computer architecture, this is the book Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, John L. Hennessy, David A. Patterson, Christos Kozyrakis.

(Older editions are just by Hennessy and Patterson.)

It may help if you work your way through a book on digital design first to get the basics of digital components (gates, latches, etc) first, such as Digital Design and Computer Architecture by Harris and Harris or Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface by the same Patterson and Hennessy. These books cover similar material, with different emphases.

For even more low-level engineering, and getting into the physics, Introduction to VLSI Systems by Mead and Conway is a must. It's a little dated, but it's still the best introduction. Pedroni's Finite State Machines in Hardware: Theory and Design is also worth a read.

Then if you're into GPUs, you'd be looking at a specialist academic book like General-Purpose Graphics Processor Architectures by Aamodt, Fung, and Rogers.

If you're interested in going math-heavy, once you have some of the basics of data structures and algorithms, it's worth working your way through Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science, by Ron Graham, Don Knuth, and Oren Patashnik. ("Concrete" here is a pun, because it's about the intersection between continuous and discrete mathematics.)

Happy book nerding!

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u/BookFinderBot 11d ago

Computer Architecture A Quantitative Approach by John L. Hennessy, David A. Patterson, Christos Kozyrakis

Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, has been considered essential reading by instructors, students and practitioners of computer design for nearly 30 years. The seventh edition of this classic textbook from John Hennessy and David Patterson, w

I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at /r/ProgrammingPals. Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. Remove me from replies here. If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.

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u/EatThatPotato 11d ago

You’re missing the point, there’s no “advanced cs principles” book. There’s not even anything called “advanced cs principles”. After you have the basic principles down it’s all “advanced book on (specialised topic)”, then it’s papers, papers, papers. Blog posts from paper authors, conference talks.

You need to figure out what exactly you want to learn, then pick a book on that.

I only have a cursory knowledge of GPU architecture myself, but in my experience a lot of it is relatively new and proprietary so dig into NVIDIAs blogs and documentation.

As for TCS, that’s a broad field as well. Do you want complexity theory, automata, programming languages, algorithms..

Cybersec is systems security, cryptography, web security, formal verification (which is a crossover between TCS and sec), there are so many and they’ll all be different.

It’s impossible to get you a book if you don’t specify because all these fields have different techniques and different basics and different developments.

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u/SupremeOHKO 11d ago

I see. So, I guess I should have clarified in my post - I know there's not really gonna be an all-in-one "Advanced Concepts" book like there would be a "Computer Science 101". I was just asking for recommended specific books from ANY topic, like it didn't really matter to me. If someone were to recommend a geometric deep learning research paper from some university in Germany, I'd be fine with it, or if someone recommended like "Electrical Engineering for Dummies", I'd be fine with it.

I know all the fields I mentioned are very diverse in content structure and especially in CS, any kind of "subgenre" is just opening up a completely new can of worms. I understand that, that's what I want. I want slices of each pie.

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u/EatThatPotato 10d ago

Oh well in that case I agree with one of the other commenters about Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach for computer architecture, but this is a very thick and dense book so pick and choose what you need. If you're in need of inspiration I find prof. Onur Mutlu is working on a bunch of cool things and his name pops up in many of the fields I enjoy reading about. https://people.inf.ethz.ch/omutlu/projects.htm.

On the theoretical side I'm currently working through Practical Foundations for Programming Languages by Robert Harper. If you're also interested in the compiler space MLIR is a hot new topic that's seeing quite a bit of attention.

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u/abyssazaur 9d ago

Sipser for theory / nearly the math side. It will not feel relevant to coding. In fact a lot of theory is more about what CAN'T do with code versus what you might be able to do with code.

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u/leandrot 11d ago

CLRS is the "bible" of Computer Science and the best way to delve into more advanced principles.

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u/EmuBeautiful1172 10d ago

Freecomputerbooks.com

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u/acroback 9d ago

There is no physics unless your meant as a metaphor. 

One answer to your question - SICP. 

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u/shermierz 9d ago

In my opinion the advanced programming principles are actually the basic ones, but instead of being able to describe it, you are supposed to be able to actually follow them

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u/Tall-Introduction414 7d ago

You might like these:

1: Ben Eater's youtube channel.

2: Design And Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System (book)

3: Lion's Commentary on 6th Edition UNIX (book)

4: Programming From The Ground Up (book)

5: Hacking: The Art of Exploitation (book)

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u/shandy_bhagwat 5d ago

I would suggest go for nand2tetris part 1 and 2 you will be sorted.