Top Computer Science books recommended by experts

At MentorCruise, we are all about making the most out of the experience of others. As part of that, we've connected and asked dozens of experts and professionals about their favourite Computer Science books – and here are the answers.

Table of Contents

Fundamentals of Computer Science

Understanding the concepts of Computer Science starts with understanding the fundamentals. On your way to mastery, it's crucial for you to understand how certain concepts were derived, and why things work like they do. Starting with these resources is the best way to do so.

Everything You Need to Ace Computer Science and Coding in One Big Fat Notebook: The Complete Middle School Study Guide (Big Fat Notebooks)

Released just three years ago, The Big Fat Notebooks revolutionized the study guide for middle schoolers, and students, parents, and teachers responded—the series has nearly 4 million copies in print with sales escalating every year. Now introducing Everything You Need to Ace Computer Science and Coding, an essential new title with the potential to run hand-in-hand with—or even outrun—Math (ov…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Cryptography Made Simple

In this introductory textbook the author explains the key topics in cryptography. He takes a modern approach, where defining what is meant by "secure" is as important as creating something that achieves that goal, and security definitions are central to the discussion throughout.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

Previously undocumented, these 23 patterns allow designers to create more flexible, elegant, and ultimately reusable designs without having to rediscover the design solutions themselves. The authors begin by describing what patterns are and how they can help you design object-oriented software.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Introduction to the Theory of Computation

Theory of computation deals with developing mathematical models of computation. This area of research is divided into three subareas: complexity theory, computability theory and automata theory. We mostly review basic structures of automata theory which are languages and finite state automata in this chapter.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems

Data is at the center of many challenges in system design today. Difficult issues need to be figured out, such as scalability, consistency, reliability, efficiency, and maintainability. In addition, we have an overwhelming variety of tools, including relational databases, NoSQL datastores, stream or batch processors, and message brokers. What are the right choices for your application? How do …

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Practical Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python 3.6

The authors of "Practical Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python 3.6" make clear the distinction between programming and computer science. This book offers an introduction to both, but will take the novice much further down the path of computer programming.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Additional Computer Science Reading

These books are not required for you to learn Computer Science, but they are highly recommended for you to deepen your knowledge.

The Pragmatic Programmer

The main qualities of what the authors refer to as a pragmatic programmer are being an early adopter, to have fast adaptation, inquisitiveness and critical thinking, realism, and being a jack-of-all-trades.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Excel Formulas QuickStudy Laminated Study Guide (QuickStudy Computer)

Guide to developing and using functions and formulas in Excel. This clear and concise coverage of the ins and outs of formula creation and use touches on many forms of math from statistics & trig to financial math. The sheer volume and wealth of information in these 6 pages is equal to 30 pages or more from your average book on the same subject. Includes screenshots.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Clean Code

Code is clean if it can be understood easily – by everyone on the team. Clean code can be read and enhanced by a developer other than its original author. With understandability comes readability, changeability, extensibility and maintainability.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach

“Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach” goes beyond the basics and delves into advanced topics in AI. It covers natural language processing, an area concerned with enabling computers to understand and generate human language. The book explores techniques for parsing, semantic analysis, and machine translation.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, also known as GEB, is a 1979 book by Douglas Hofstadter. By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, the book expounds concepts fundamental to mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

The Self-taught Programmer: The Definitive Guide to Programming Professionally

"The Self-taught Programmer" is a roadmap, a guide to take you from writing your first Python program, to passing your first technical interview. I divided the book into five sections: 1. Learn to program in Python 3 and build your first program.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Specializations and Deeper Computer Science Knowledge

You've got your basics in order – time to move on to some advanced and specialized concepts. Computer Science is evolving every day, these books can help you master it.

The Pragmatic Programmer: Your Journey To Mastery, 20th Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition)

The Pragmatic Programmer is one of those rare tech books you’ll read, re-read, and read again over the years. Whether you’re new to the field or an experienced practitioner, you’ll come away with fresh insights each and every time.
Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt wrote the first edition of this influential book in 1999 to help their clients create better software and rediscover the joy of coding.…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

This list is curated by MentorCruise and can include Amazon affiliate links. Have any other suggestions? Add here.

Augment your Computer Science books

There is no better source of accountability and motivation than having a personal mentor. What used to be impossible to find is now just two clicks away! All mentors are vetted & hands-on!

Only 5 Spot Left

Hi, I’m Georgios. I’m a Principal Engineer with 13 years of experience building and scaling systems at companies like Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung. My work has spanned machine learning, system design, and platform engineering—often leading high-impact teams that delivered production-ready solutions at global scale. I’ve conducted 400+ interviews …

$240 / month

Only 1 Spot Left

With over 12 years of professional experience, the last 7 working in Corporate America, I have experience as a Presales/Solutions Engineer, Project Manager, and Front-end developer. Throughout my career, I had the opportunity to mentor a diverse range of professionals in technology in the US, Europe and Brazil, especially people …

$120 / month

Only 1 Spot Left

I am a pragmatic software engineer with 20+ years of experience, passionate about simplicity, operational and engineering excellence, DevOps, distributed systems and computer science. I am also a teacher and mentor at heart, which allows me to connect with software engineers, managers and tech product leaders of all levels of …

$200 / month

Only 2 Spot Left

I designed and built most of HubSpot's observability platform, and have handled realtime (sub-15s latency) streams of millions of datapoints per minute, and terabytes per day. I've improved Amazon's open source balancing algorithm for Kinesis to support downtime-free rebalancing over thousands of concurrent shards. I wrote the first endorsed Java …

$360 / month

Only 1 Spot Left

👋🏻 Hi there, my name is Rok. From a PhD at Cambridge to scaling a unicorn startup, I've faced numerous challenges, and I'm happy to share my insights with you: 1. Leadership and Management in Tech 👥 With 10+ years in leadership roles, I've managed teams that consistently delivered exceptional …

$260 / month

Only 2 Spot Left

# BetterDev Mentorship Benefits # > Become a better developer! * In only 3–6 months * 10–15 in-person sessions * 24-hour-response chat (Mo–Fr) * 30+ hand-crafted coding exercises ## Coding curriculum ## - Learn **4 essential skills** for developers - Learn **real-life coding workflows** - Have **10 essential programming basics** …

$110 / month

Browse all Computer Science mentors

Still not convinced? Don't just take our word for it

We've already delivered 1-on-1 mentorship to thousands of students, professionals, managers and executives. Even better, they've left an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for our mentors.

Find a Computer Science mentor
  • "Naz is an amazing person and a wonderful mentor. She is supportive and knowledgeable with extensive practical experience. Having been a manager at Netflix, she also knows a ton about working with teams at scale. Highly recommended."

  • "Brandon has been supporting me with a software engineering job hunt and has provided amazing value with his industry knowledge, tips unique to my situation and support as I prepared for my interviews and applications."

  • "Sandrina helped me improve as an engineer. Looking back, I took a huge step, beyond my expectations."