A quick search of the internet reveals a plethora of books for programmers. No one has time to read even a minuscule fraction of the available books.
What you need is a curated list of programming books. Better than that. A curated list of free programming books. Free and open source books still have a cost — your precious time. And just because a book is free/open source doesn’t, itself, signify any great quality to the work. Hence the need for some recommendations for free books to help you learn C, C++, Java, Python, R, or whatever language takes your fancy.
The books we’re recommending will help increase your technical skills and make you proficient in the language of your choice. And some of them even provide a little light relief on the way. Humor can be a great aid to learning.
Many of the books we recommend offer a solid foundation in learning the relevant programming language. Some are very specialist, some offer a quick overview. There are books targeted at people who have zero programming experience, as well as programmers who have learned one or two languages but are looking to widen their skills. Other books are targeted at an intermediate and/or expert level. All are worth reading.
Some of the books are available to purchase in printed form. Showing your support in this way can be a great motivation for the authors to carry on releasing free books.
The series is expanding although it’s pretty comprehensive already. And we’re adding new languages, so remember to bookmark this page.
| Free Programming Books | |
|---|---|
| Java | General-purpose, concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, high-level language |
| C | General-purpose, procedural, portable, high-level language |
| Python | General-purpose, structured, powerful language |
| C++ | General-purpose, portable, free-form, multi-paradigm language |
| C# | Combines the power and flexibility of C++ with the simplicity of Visual Basic |
| JavaScript | Interpreted, prototype-based, scripting language |
| PHP | PHP has been at the helm of the web for many years |
| HTML | HyperText Markup Language |
| SQL | Access and manipulate data held in a relational database management system |
| Ruby | General purpose, scripting, structured, flexible, fully object-oriented language |
| Assembly | As close to writing machine code without writing in pure hexadecimal |
| Swift | Powerful and intuitive general-purpose programming language |
| Groovy | Powerful, optionally typed and dynamic language |
| Go | Compiled, statically typed programming language |
| Pascal | Imperative and procedural language designed in the late 1960s |
| Perl | High-level, general-purpose, interpreted, scripting, dynamic language |
| R | De facto standard among statisticians and data analysts |
| COBOL | Common Business-Oriented Language |
| Scala | Modern, object-functional, multi-paradigm, Java-based language |
| Fortran | The first high-level language, using the first compiler |
| Scratch | Visual programming language designed for 8-16 year-old children |
| Lua | Designed as an embeddable scripting language |
| Logo | Dialect of Lisp that features interactivity, modularity, extensibility |
| Rust | Ideal for systems, embedded, and other performance critical code |
| Lisp | Unique features - excellent to study programming constructs |
| Ada | ALGOL-like programming language, extended from Pascal and other languages |
| Haskell | Standardized, general-purpose, polymorphically, statically typed language |
| Scheme | A general-purpose, functional language descended from Lisp and Algol |
| Prolog | A general purpose, declarative, logic programming language |
| Forth | Imperative stack-based programming language |
| Clojure | Dialect of the Lisp programming language |
| Julia | High-level, high-performance language for technical computing |
| Awk | Versatile language designed for pattern scanning and processing language |
| CoffeeScript | Transcompiles into JavaScript inspired by Ruby, Python and Haskell |
| BASIC | Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code |
| Erlang | General-purpose, concurrent, declarative, functional language |
| VimL | Powerful scripting language of the Vim editor |
| OCaml | The main implementation of the Caml language |
| ECMAScript | Best known as the language embedded in web browsers |
| Bash | Shell and command language; popular both as a shell and a scripting language |
| LaTeX | Professional document preparation system and document markup language |
| TeX | Markup and programming language - create professional quality typeset text |
| Arduino | Inexpensive, flexible, open source microcontroller platform |
| TypeScript | Strict syntactical superset of JavaScript adding optional static typing |
| Elixir | Relatively new functional language running on the Erlang virtual machine |
| F# | Uses functional, imperative, and object-oriented programming methods |
| Tcl | Dynamic language based on concepts of Lisp, C, and Unix shells |
| Factor | Dynamic stack-based programming language |
| Eiffel | Object-oriented language designed by Bertrand Meyer |
| Agda | Dependently typed functional language based on intuitionistic Type Theory |
| Icon | Wide variety of features for processing and presenting symbolic data |
| XML | Rules for defining semantic tags describing structure ad meaning |
| Vala | Object-oriented language, syntactically similar to C# |
| Standard ML | General-purpose functional language characterized as "Lisp with types" |
| D | General-purpose systems programming language with a C-like syntax |
| Dart | Client-optimized language for fast apps on multiple platforms |
| Markdown | Plain text formatting syntax designed to be easy-to-read and easy-to-write |
| Kotlin | More modern version of Java |
| Objective-C | Object-oriented language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to C |
| PureScript | Small strongly, statically typed language compiling to JavaScript |
| ClojureScript | Compiler for Clojure that targets JavaScript |
| VHDL | Hardware description language used in electronic design automation |
| J | Array programming language based primarily on APL |
| LabVIEW | Designed to enable domain experts to build power systems quickly |
| PostScript | Interpreted, stack-based and Turing complete language |
| Raku | Member of the Perl family of programming languages |
| Dylan | Multi-paradigm language supporting functional and object-oriented coding |
| Coq | Dependently typed language similar to Agda, Idris, F* and others |
| CSS | CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) specifies a web page’s appearance |
| Racket | General-purpose, object-oriented, multi-paradigm, functional language |
If you’re looking for programming tutorials, we’ve that covered in our Best Free Programming Tutorials.