On Lisp is well regarded as an advanced Lisp book. The author put it into the public domain, and it is now available from an on-deman printer (Lulu.com).
What other classic books are we missing out on because they're out of print, and which ones are available on-line or on-demand?
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I really like Patterns of Software: Tales from the Software Community by Richard Gabriel. He made it available under a creative commons license after it went out of print.
From Adrian Mouat -
The Unix Hater's Handbook. One of the editors has scanned it in and made it available as a PDF.
From Barry Brown -
The Implementation of Functional Programming Languages by Simon Peyton-Jones ISBN 013453333X. I haven't read all of it, but I do like what I've read.
It's available in PDF or HTML.
From Andrew Gwozdziewycz -
The Practical Guide to Structured System Design is timeless. Alas, it doesn't really meet your criteria because used copies can be had (at Amazon) for as little as $1.34. It's worth lots more than that.
From rp -
I don't know about "classic", but the only decent book ever written about DirectShow programming is not only out of print but used copies sell for hundres of dollars (if you can find one). Microsoft has sorta/kinda orphaned DirectShow, but it remains the only way to do many video and audio tasks in Windows, so if you want to do much of anything other than just playing a video, you have to use it (and you had better be really good at C++ and COM, 'cause it don't play well with .Net, although the DirectShow.NET library gets you about 80-90% there).
Programming DirectShow for Digital Video and Television
On a related note (out of print books), it really pays to frequent your local thrift stores. I often find "classic" text books and reference books at the ones around here, often for 50 cents or a buck. If I ever find that DirectShow book for that price, I'll celebrate and sell it on eBay.
From CMPalmer -
Bruce McConnell's Hardcore Visual Basic, no longer necessary because VB 4 and 5 are long-since deprecated, nonetheless was an awe-inspiring primer on how to force the Windows API to do what you wanted it to, even when working within a limited environment.
CMPalmer : There may be books that have a longer impact on the world of computing, but Hardcore VB was hands-down the most *useful* tech book I've ever owned. Thank God I'm not doing VB anymore, but that book made you a wizard.From Jekke -
Etudes for Programmers by Charles Wetherell
Each chapter is a project. It starts with Life (the classic Artificial Life program), moves through 'a printers devil', games and AI projects, with the final projects specifically for compiler courses.
It's out of print but you can still get second-hand copies on Amazon.
From Stephen -
Object-Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach is sadly missed.
From Graham Lee -
The Craft of Text Editing by Craig Finseth (available online) goes through the process of constructing a text editor, in quite a bit of detail. We're not talking about sticking pre-fab UI elements together and adding a few methods - this is about building an EMACS style editor from the ground up - valuable in that understanding the approach to solving the problems of a text editor is applicable to any complex interface. (but please don't implement a text editor - there are enough already!)
From Stephen
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