Vincent Gable’s Blog

In high school, I literally wore out my copy of The New Turing Omnibus: Sixty-Six Excursions in Computer Science. The graphics topics are dated, and there is no discussion about newfangled topics in computing, like the internet. But the meat of the book are timeless computer science fundamentals. It still has the best explanation of what “NP-Complete” means (page 276) that I’ve run across.

The book covers some dense territory, but is still fairly accessible. When my mother asked me, “how can a computer make a random number, if it only does what it’s told?” I pointed her to the chapter 8, “RANDOM NUMBERS: The Chaitin-Kolmogoroff Theory” (page 49). The math was a bit over her head, but she could still read the chapter, and it answered her question. I recommend it to The New Turing Omnibus, without reservation, to anyone who’s considering Computer Science.

What are your favorite introductory Computer Science books?

Patrick Thomson suggests Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. It’s an excellent and fun introduction to the essential theory behind computer science.

Here is an excellent overview of the current state of the P=NP question.