Found in 7 comments on Hacker News
mindcrime · 2021-11-22 · Original thread
Hopcroft & Ullman[1] is generally widely recommended. I only just got my copy a couple of days ago, so haven't had a chance to dig in yet.

The Sipser book[2] is also generally recommended as being very good.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201441241/

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Theory-Computation-Micha...

joshmarlow · 2021-03-31 · Original thread
I'm assuming this was the Ullman book you took a look at - https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Automata-Languages-Compu...

If not, it's good but pretty dense. If you didn't like that, then I would recommend this one - https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Theory-Computation-Micha...

Sipser has a lot less notation and more english explanations of the concepts. I picked it up and read most of it after graduating - it's pretty easy to follow (though if I recall, I think some of the terminology around Turing complete languages differed slightly from the Ullman text).

mlevental · 2019-08-18 · Original thread
>Go ahead and get your free copy of Avi Wigderson's Mathematics and Computation https://www.math.ias.edu/avi/book.

i've seen some ridiculous virtue signaling recommendations on hn before but this takes the cake. have you actually read the book? wigderson is an IAS professor (for those that don't know, einstein and godel were IAS professors) and this book is a research survey (most of the theorems have refs to papers). i've read both sipser and hopcroft ullman and i'm still pretty far away from being able to easily read it. and you're recommending this to someone that learned js from a bootcamp. you think maybe she's not the target audience?

so that i'm not labeled as just a critic: the standard formal languages book is sipser

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Theory-Computation-Micha...

it's colloquial and has a lot of diagrams and "intuition". people really like it but i actually think hopcruft ullman is better because it's more structured

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Automata-Theory-Language...

formalsystem · 2019-08-18 · Original thread
There's so much more to CS theory than big O notation and you're in for a treat if you check out any of the below - happy to share more if people are interested.

1. https://www.amazon.com/Computational-Complexity-Approach-San...

2. https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Computing-since-Democritus-Aa...

3. https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden...

4. https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Theory-Computation-Micha...

mwerty · 2019-08-18 · Original thread
For anyone who'd want to know more, this is the textbook I used in a CS theory class where I first learned about the Chomsky connection: Introduction to the Theory of Computation by Michael Sipser (https://www.amazon.com/dp/113318779X/ref=rdr_ext_tmb).

(Edit: added the title and author name in my post)