Good Books for Programmers

I've been asked to suggest some good books (why? Isn't howtocode good enough? ;-)

Hardware Reference Manual

Essential for demo and game coders.

Rom Kernal Manual: Libraries

Essential for *ALL* Amiga Programmers

Rom Kernal Manual: Devices

Essential if you plan to do any work with Device IO (input.device, timer.device, trackdisk.device, etc...)

Rom Kernal Manual: Includes & Autodocs

These are available on disk instead, which is a lot cheaper! Essential reference work,

All these books are available to developers on the CATS CD 2 as AmigaGuide files.. $50 from CATS US.

Amiga User Interface & Style Guide

Probably the most boring book I've ever read :-) Useful if you intend to write applications, but even then some of the rules have changed for V39 since this book was printed.

AmigaDOS manual 3rd Edition (Bantam)

Truly awful book, unfortunately the ONLY official dos.library reference. Why it can't be integrated into the RKM's I don't know... If you need to program dos.library and want info on AmigaDos file and hunk formats, this is the book.

Mapping the Amiga (Compute)

--------------------------- One of my favourite books. This is an easy-to-read reference to all system (1.3) functions and structures. Much easier to use than the Includes & Autodocs. I wish there was a V39 update to this! [Ed: Eventually there was!]

Amiga System Programmers Guide (Abacus)

Quite handy, it covers a lot of the Hardware Reference manual, Rom Kernal Manuals and more in one book, but I'd suggest you buy the official books instead.

Advanced Amiga System Programmers Guide (Abacus)

Slightly more interesting than the first one, covers mainly OS level programming, but again nothing really new.

Amiga Disk Drives Inside and Out (Abacus)

AVOID THIS BOOK! It has some of the worst code and coding practices I have ever seen in it. Half of the code will only work under Kickstart 1.2, the other half doesn't work at all!!!!

Amiga Realtime 3d Graphics

Wow! What a useful book! Explains how to do vector graphics in 68000 on the Amiga, from basics to complex world models with lightsourcing. I haven't tried any of the code from the book yet, but it looks very good.

680x0 Programming by Example (Howard Sams & Company)

Excellent book on 68000 programming. Covers 68000/020/030 instructions, optimization. Aimed at the advanced 68000 user, some really neat stuff in this book. The only 68000 book I've bought, except the Motorola manual.

Motorola User's Manuals (Prentice Hall?)

Explains most things you'd ever wish to know about your processor, and worth gold when trying to estimate cycles used by your code and what commands there are and everything. Thanks to ITT Multikomponent for giving me the mc68030 User's Manual for free (why?).

The Discworld Series - Terry Pratchett

Nothing to do with Amigas, but excellent books. If you need a break from programming, or just inspiration for impossible things to have in an impossible demo, read one of these!

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