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Five Programming Books That Changed How I Think
(adamtornhill.substack.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2026
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Programming
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In the 1990s, the book that got me excited was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_Perl.
It was the right time, the right book, for me. Probably many other books would have had the same affect on me, if I had read them instead that month. But it made me laugh and think
Similar for me actually. I don't know if it was this book or another one. (The one I read implemented trig functions in a later chapter.)
But by early-mid aughts when I was curious about programming, I found a perl book that was available to read online for free. Never did use much Perl after that, but learned to think that way.