Hacker's Delight
Hacker's Delight by Henry S. Warrenby Henry S. Warren Jr.
Shares rank 21 of 115 programming books by recommenders
People recommend it as a collection of low-level algorithms and bit manipulation tricks, with chapters that show many practical examples. No critics appeared among the quotes.
People recommend it as a collection of low-level algorithms and bit manipulation tricks, with chapters that show many practical examples. No critics appeared among the quotes.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Low-level algorithms and bit manipulation
“Look up the book Hackers Delight if you like there low level algorithms and bit manipulations”
Comment from 13 Apr 2026 in “Optimization of 32-bit Unsigned Division by Constants on 64-bit Targets” “My favorite part of it is Chapter 2 the bit manipulation tricks.”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Branchless Quicksort faster than std:sort and pdqsort with C and C++ API” Chapter 2 bit manipulation tricks
“My favorite part of it is Chapter 2 the bit manipulation tricks.”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Branchless Quicksort faster than std:sort and pdqsort with C and C++ API” “The chapter on this in Hacker's Delight is really good”
Comment from 2 Dec 2025 in “Advent of Compiler Optimisations 2025”
Other programming books people recommend
The four most recommended other programming books, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crafting Interpretersby Robert Nystrom | 60 | 4 | 94% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Clean Codeby Robert C. Martin | 31 | 87 | 26% | 9 | — | — |
| The Pragmatic Programmerby Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas | 28 | 1 | 97% | 7 | — | Approved |
| How to Design Programsby Matthias Felleisen and Robert Bruce Findler and Matthew Flatt and Shriram Krishnamurthi | 18 | 2 | 90% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Hacker's Delightby Henry S. Warren Jr.This page | 7 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
6 of the 7 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“My favorite part of it is Chapter 2 the bit manipulation tricks.”
“Lots of examples of stuff like this in there.”
“Look up the book Hackers Delight if you like there low level algorithms and bit manipulations”
“the classic Hacker's Delight by Henry Warren”
“Numerical Recipes and Hacker's Delight have tons of gems that you won't get from an LLM”
“The chapter on this in Hacker's Delight is really good”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.