Show HN: The rarest tech books and docs you've probably never read

Certainly not rare, but consistent with the readings on the shelves: "Thoughts on Flash" (https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple...)

I don't think 'rare' is the right word here. Rare means you can't find it easily, not 'what you have missed or don't know about'. But then what is the word for that? English doesn't have it, afaik. Perhaps 'unexplored treasures'?

Like so: "Less-known treasures you probably haven't read" but this doesn't have a zing to it.

Or? "A collection of useful tech books you've probably missed" sounds more accurate, though not sensational.

hi friends!

i like building cool things so i built read rare - the rarest docs and books you've probably never read.

some of the best writing about building things was never meant to be public - steve jobs' agenda email for apple's secret top 100 offsite. facebook's little red book. the 1968 memo intel used to raise its first money. sequoia's "R.I.P. good times" deck.

most of it is buried in court exhibits, dead links, and archive scans, so i put it all on one shelf.

what's the rarest doc or book you've ever read? drop it in the comments and i'll add the best ones to the shelf.

What’s meant by “rare” here? It seems like there might be a language barrier thing going on. There’s nothing rare about, say, John Sculley’s autobiography; I can buy it on Amazon new for about $20 or used for about $5.

I get the sense that the word rare shouldn't be used here.

Rather this is a nicely presented collection of documents, emails and books that the author thinks are worth looking into.

Maybe undervalued would work better?

I yearn for internal memos because they reveal the first-person craft, my reading list just got reshuffled!

I did read “hard drive” and enjoyed it very much, but Sinofsky told me it was not accurate.

Interesting, but not what I was expecting. I have a small book collection, mostly from used book stores around Boulder, CO. I think the rarest and most interesting ones I have are:

"Music By Computers", published in 1969. Before books had websites, CDs, or floppy disks, they had "flexi discs". Covers composing and generating music on computers in the 60s. [0]

"Parallel Logic Programming" published in 1991. Covers implementing Prolog and other logic programming languages on multi-processor systems in the late 80s and early 90s. [1]

"Strand: New Concepts in Parallel Programming", published in 1990. Documents a language that's more-or-less a stepping stone between Prolog and Erlang. [2]

"LISP LORE: A Guide To Programming The Lisp Machine", published in 1987 and is an intro to programming on Lisp Machines. I found a mint condition copy at Goodwill for $1. [3]

"Elementary BASIC: Learning To Program Your Computer In Basic With Sherlock Holmes" published in 1982. Write BASIC code to help Sherlock and Watson solve cases. They just don't make computer books like this any more. [4]

"Man And The Computer" published in 1972, written by John Kemeny, one of the creators of Basic. Predicts the rise of home computers, the internet, Wikipedia, online news, and a bunch of other modern technologies decades before they actually existed. [5]

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Music-Computers-Heinz-von-Foerster/dp...

[1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262200875/parallel-logic-progra...

[2] https://archive.org/details/strandnewconcept0000fost

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Lisp-Lore-Guide-Programming-Machine/d...

[4] https://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Chronicled-Learning-Comput...

[5] https://archive.org/details/mancomputerbyjoh0000john

Once I was interested in writing SCP(not sftp) on my own. Good luck finding the spec. I happened upon a random Oracle doc that got me 90% of the way there, and even that felt like a rare treasure.

Nice collections, cool to have these in one place.

like your collection thank you for putting this together

This is very nice. I'm reading "The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce".

Thank you for putting this together. Bell Systems Technical Journal articles would be nice to add.

here's a rare tech book written by the guy who wrote the C compiler for Sun

https://progforperf.github.io/Expert_C_Programming.pdf

I'm glad you're excited about what you "built" but it's wildly overproduced as is, and inconsistent in how the animations work. No rhyme or reason to what you've decided to put on the site either, other than "these are some big names that hopefully people will recognize". It reeks of slop.