Reddit reviews Inside the Machine: An Illustrated Introduction to Microprocessors and Computer Architecture

Here are some books I've heard are good (I haven't read them myself, but I provide commentary based on what I've heard about them):

• The New Turing Omnibus: Sixty-Six Excursions in Computer Science - covers a range of theoretical topics via a series of small, self-contained chapters/vignettes.
  
• Inside the Machine - builds up an understanding of the hardware. Many people will say this isn't /r/compsci, but I think knowing about hardware fits with your intent.

So I've been doing a bit more ASM programming etc lately. I liked this book when I read it, but these days I've gotten interested in really doing fast programming, i.e. taking advantage of the processors design in your code.

So if you liked this book and wanted to take it to the next step in superfast, I suggest these resources:

• Agner Fog's optimization page
  
• Jon Stokes' book Inside the Machine is AMAZING and covers the dawn of advanced x86 processor design up until recently - all the way from the Pentium to the Core 2 line, and covers PPC design too!
  
  And if you're on Linux, you NEED to install perf and check if your CPU has any performance counters it can take advantage of. They give tons of insight and may upset some assumptions you have about how your code really performs. valgrind's cachegrind tool is wonderful in the same vein, but only for simulated L1-L2 cache usage.
  
  Also, if you have one of those fancy new phones with a modern processor, ARM assembly is wonderful and fun (I do it on my iPhone.) Shit, some of them are dual core now. Throw your C code in gcc -S or whatever and look at the generated assembly. I'll try and find my resources for that later.

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software,The Elements of Computing Systems and Inside the Machine were recommended on Hacker News.

I have the last one, I will re-read it over Easter holidays...

I don't think we need to go that deep. An excellent book on how CPUs work at the assembly level is Inside the Machine. I can only recommend it even for programmers.

As someone else mentioned, the Hennessy and Patterson Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, and the Patterson and Hennessy Computer Organization and Design are the de facto standards (I used both in my Comp. Eng. undergrad) and are really fantastic books (the latter being more "software" oriented so to speak).

They are not EE textbooks (as far as I know) but they are text books nonetheless. A great book I found that is slightly dated but gives a simplified review of many processors is Inside the Machine: An Illustrated Introduction to Microprocessors and Computer Architecture which is less technical but I enjoyed it very much all the same. It is NOT a textbook, and I highly, highly recommend it.

Hope that helps!

It largely depends on which Computer Science degree you are going to do. There can be some that focus heavily on software and very little on hardware and some that get a nice balance between the two. If the degree is going to focus on hardware I would recommend reading up on the underlying logic of a computer and then reading this book (Inside the machine). ITM isn't a very technical book(I would label it as the computer science equivalent of popular science) but it gives a nice clear overview of the what happens in a processor.

When it comes to programming, I would recommend starting with Java and Eclipse. Java gets quite a bit of hate but for a newcomer, I think Java would be easier to grasp than the likes of C/C++. C/C++ are nice languages but a newcomer may find their error messages a little bit obscure and may get confused with the nitty-gritty nuances of the languages.

Though the one thing you should realise is that programming is a skill that isn't confined to one language. If you understand the basic concepts of recursion, arrays, classes, generics/templates, inheritance, etc. you can apply this knowledge to almost any language. Ideally i would recomend two books on programming (Algorithmics) and (Introduction to Algorithms). Algorithmics is another books I would label as the cs equivalent to popular science but the early chapters give a nice overview of exactly what algorithms actually are. Introduction to Algorithms is a more technical book that I would recommend to someone once they know how to program and want a deeper understanding of algorithms.

The rest is personal preference, personally I prefer to use a Unix machine with Sublime Text 2 and the command line. Some will try to convince you to use Vim or Emacs but you should just find whichever you are most comfortable with.

Try this book: http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Machine-Introduction-Microprocessors-Architecture/dp/1593271042

For understanding how computers work , there's a good book by the co-founder of arstechnica.

http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Machine-Introduction-Microprocessors-Architecture/dp/1593271042