[Energy1]

I've been trying to understand programming for a while now. I know some Python and Clojure, but don't consider that programming knowledge mostly because its just syntax and syntax is just a triviality. So, instead I am trying to gain a better proficiency through programming close to hardware because I heard there are programs(for example, Assembly) that are in one-to-one correspondence with the underlying hardware they are written for. I've been recommended the books(and many more), but I am not sure how to group them thematically. I am not scared of math parts - just there's an huge volume of text to digest for just an intro to "programming done right". I am not in a rush to learn JAVA and go dev somewhere. Thanks.

[pjmorris]

The books you've listed are all excellent, but are not direct paths to 'better proficiency through programming close to the hardware'. I believe that SICP might be your best bet from among the books you've listed. Work through it first, then decide where to go next. A caveat: SICP spends much of its time approaching computation from a hardware-independent perspective (expressed in the old quip 'Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes'.) Don Knuth takes almost the opposite approach in 'The Art of Computer Programming', defining a machine language (for an imaginary machine) to be clear about implementation details and time-space tradeoffs. Both perspectives dig much deeper than 'just syntax'.

[logn]

> just there's an huge volume of text

Think of how CS students are going to approach these. They'll watch lectures, skim the text, and do exercises. Few students would sit down and read these like a fiction novel, and if they do, they follow it with exercises because reading retention was low. So I'd do some google searches with "site:.edu" and find powerpoints and homeworks to follow from courses that use these books.