Ask HN: What are the most fundamental books on computer science?

I won't recommend SICP for people who don't know any programming at all. But I feel SICP has a magical voice about the art of programming that HtDP didn't replicate

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is frequently recommended here.

K&R C is a minimalist introduction to the C language. And I love it for that.

a pretty terrible book to learn modern C with?

Designing Data-Intensive Applications, Martin Kleppmann. This gives you a phenomenally good survey of concepts and practice of distributed systems.

found it suprisingly easy to follow. It's perfect if you like things explained step-by-step and in a simple way.

I can strongly recommend Code by Charles Petzold.

TAOCP

Knuth's writing is also a pleasure to read.

And TAOCP has an incredibly thorough discussion of combinatorics that I found invaluable.

"The Art of Computer Programming" is a great book

it's not a fundamental book

the contents of TAOCP are a lot less likely to get stale than the majority of tech books

The Art of Computer Programming

Clr is probably the bible

Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen et al.

These are smart programmers and smart educators, and I trust they made a better intro course. I won't recommend SICP for people who don't know any programming at all. But I feel SICP has a magical voice about the art of programming that HtDP didn't replicate

Spivak’s Calculus

"Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" by the Gang of Four.

“The Algorithm Design Manual”, by Steven Skiena

Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective has a lot of good explanations of hardware/os subsystems that can be hard to find detailed explanations of elsewhere.

Linear Algebra Done Right