[shanusmagnus]

These look great, and judging by other people's comments, are instances of a class of book I will poorly describe as "lovingly-crafted works of art on highly technical CS topics", a genre that I am always on the lookout for more examples of.

From my own experience, some examples might be:

- SICP, by Abelson and Sussman

- Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming, by Norvig

By general acclaim, some examples might be:

- How to Design Programs, by Felleisen et al

- Beautiful Racket, by Butterick

- LISP In Small Pieces, by Queinnec

- The Art of Computer Programming, by Knuth

- The Elements of Computing Systems, by Nisan and Schocken

What else comes to mind? (My list is very LISPy, but that's just bc I have high awareness there.)

[thecatster]

It's not really CS, but alongside the books you have listed (I have most of those physically and as eBooks!) I absolutely adore "The Art of Electronics" as the Bible to electronics. It's definitely helped me out immensely.

[shanusmagnus]

That's a great example -- I know people who have that and feel a religious zeal for it. That "religious zeal about a technical / science created with art and care" book is the feeling I'm really after.

[thecatster]

Right, exactly: when that much care is put into a resource, I truly feel that I enjoy it more, even if the material itself might seem dry at first. Those kinds of feeling books are truly special.

[shanusmagnus]

100%, which reminds me: another example of books created with incredible care are anything by Douglas Hofstadter. The canonical example is Goedel, Escher, Bach; but one that I think is super under-rated is Le Ton beau de Marot -- not only does he care about the content, but the page layout, the font, everything. Truly a labor of love and obsession.

[zem]

"Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming", by Van Roy and Haridi