Glossary of Book Acronyms Used on Hacker News

Online forum users like to use acronyms for lots of things, such as the common IMO (In My Opinion). Users on Hacker News also like to use abbreviations people (for example Richard Stallman is RMS), and books. I have queried my data on the book recommendations from hacker news for the acronyms used to refer to books. See the previous post for how I queried chatgpt to identify book titles. I did find that ChatGPT got a few wrong, for example at times it thought CLR referred to the book by K&R, “The C Programming Language”, and half the time it thought that CTM referred to “Concrete Mathematics” by Graham, Knuth and Patashnik.

One book on the list below that I haven’t heard of before is Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming by Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi. It looks intriguing as a survey of different types of programming language features, but I’m not sure about the fact that its examples are written in an obscure programming language called Oz. It might be interesting to try reading it.

Here are the acronyms I have found, in alphabetical order. Let me know if you think there should be any additions to that list:

See footnote for info on affiliate links.1

# Acronym Title Author Count Example HN comments
1 4HWW The 4-Hour Workweek Timothy Ferriss 7 280665, 280721, 280918, 17168700
2 AIMA Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach Stuart Russell, Peter Norvig 9 13900970, 13901742, 13901769, 13902500
3 CLRS Introduction to Algorithms Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, Clifford Stein 46 3609819, 30826655, 29217578, 29217601
4 CTM Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming Peter Van Roy, Seif Haridi 4 11229614, 1080841, 1944976, 1945186
5 DDIA Designing Data-Intensive Applications Martin Kleppmann 13 29312903, 34231811, 33178018, 29188324
6 DFW Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace 3 21946404, 5691809, 5692079
7 GEB Gödel, Escher, Bach Douglas Hofstadter 79 29463261, 29463394, 29464225, 135370
8 GTD Getting Things Done David Allen 13 33594986, 27254080, 14482199, 19405737
9 HHGTTG The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 9 17512333, 17512530, 31996126, 23467776
10 HPMOR Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Eliezer Yudkowsky 11 29464335, 29464895, 8718219, 10785418
11 HTDP How to Design Programs Matthias Felleisen, Robert Bruce Findler, Matthew Flatt, Shriram Krishnamurthi 11 35931039, 29209572, 25301248, 25301812
12 ISLR An Introduction to Statistical Learning Gareth James, Daniela Witten, Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani 3 31970122, 29728565, 29729655
13 K&R The C Programming Language Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie 85 7999987, 3475058, 3626351, 13426443
14 KJV King James Version 6 30739151, 19092656, 36451653, 30242997
15 LOTR The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien 13 15686023, 32713786, 32714002, 32714051
16 MTW Gravitation Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, John Archibald Wheeler 3 34449073, 21348541, 21417798
17 NVC Nonviolent Communication Marshall B. Rosenberg 4 20348320, 19095853, 13973617, 29606095
18 NWT New World Translation 3 30242997, 30244476, 30250097
19 OSTEP Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau, Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau 3 34231811, 35929734, 30488530
20 PAIP Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming Peter Norvig 14 13900558, 13901742, 13902500, 13902541
21 PCL Practical Common Lisp Peter Seibel 3 1015973, 1015987, 253185
22 QED QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter Richard P. Feynman 6 25367181, 30740501, 14480584, 1974543
23 RDPD Rich Dad Poor Dad Robert Kiyosaki 3 13879458, 687131, 687218
24 SICM Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics Gerald Jay Sussman, Jack Wisdom 3 14877056, 7578361, 7579734
25 SICP Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, Julie Sussman 219 8000190, 8001050, 135538, 17626041
26 TAOCP The Art of Computer Programming Donald E. Knuth 49 1850034, 1850113, 135280, 29307891

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