What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory
What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory by Ulrich Drepperby Ulrich Drepper
Shares rank 38 of 115 programming books by recommenders
Ulrich Drepper's classic explains how memory and caches work, and people keep sharing it as a helpful read. Critics say the title overstates who needs these details.
Ulrich Drepper's classic explains how memory and caches work, and people keep sharing it as a helpful read. Critics say the title overstates who needs these details.
5 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- 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: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 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
Classic reference on memory
“Ulrich Drepper's classic What every Programmer should know about Memory”
Comment from 25 Jul 2026 in “A concrete explanation of how a cache works” “the best thing Ulrich Drepper ever did”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore” Helpful for anyone interested
“it's good enough to deserve one more link to it”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory [pdf]” “this could be helpful for anyone interested”
Comment from 27 Dec 2025 in “Nvidia Just Paid $20B for a Company That Missed Its Revenue Target by 75%”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Title overstates who needs it
“the title was wrong when it came out - not every programmer needs to know those details”
Comment from 1 Nov 2026 in “It's the memory latency, stupid”
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 Hunt and Thomas | 28 | 1 | 97% | 7 | — | Approved |
| How to Design Programsby Felleisen, Findler, Flatt and Krishnamurthi | 18 | 2 | 90% | 7 | — | Approved |
| What Every Programmer Should Know About Memoryby Ulrich DrepperThis page | 5 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
All 5 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“the title was wrong when it came out - not every programmer needs to know those details”
“Ulrich Drepper's classic What every Programmer should know about Memory”
“the best thing Ulrich Drepper ever did”
“it's good enough to deserve one more link to it”
“this could be helpful for anyone interested”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.