A maths textbook written for children, that is in its fourth edition. Does the Venn diagram for those categories overlap for any other book?
‘The Little Schemer’ starts by asking you if the word ‘atom’ is a string of characters (it is), and manages within less than 200 pages of short, Socratic questions to have you ponder some of the most fundamental ideas within maths and computer science such as the Halting problem and how interpreters can run on themselves. And it’s not like these ponderings are trivial, the textbook ‘Types and Programming Languages’ says to read ‘The Little Schemer’ for a derivation of the Y-combinator.
Friedman’s book is in the rare category of the truly playful and utterly profound. Mind bending exercises that stretch your hat finish off with calls to get cake and pages are reserved for jam stains. A true pleasure, one to re-read several times.