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A fascinating book on Turing and Church is “The Annotated Turing”. It’s a walk through of Turings paper with analysis and commentary.

It was written by Charles Petzold, who also wrote the immensity popular book “CODE”.

https://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Turing-Through-Historic-Com...

⬐ arduinomancer

+1

It’s pretty easy to understand from an average programmer’s perspective

I found the proofs at the end are a bit hard to follow but it’s not really critical to understand them if you just want to know what a Turing Machine is and the history/context behind it

I thought it was really interesting how Turing defines what are essentially “macros” for the machine

For example copy or erase

"The Annotated Turing" by Charles Petzold: https://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Turing-Through-Historic-Com...

⬐ pliftkl

This is one of the more fascinating books that I've read recently. The commentary makes the paper itself very accessible. I rather enjoyed the direct reproduction of the paper itself (with typos!) in the book, and the near line by line commentary at points. It's not the way that I would want to be taught about Turing machines, but it's amazing to see them articulated for the first time.

⬐ mindfulgeek

I was very happily surprised by how much I enjoyed this book.

⬐ henrik_w

On my "to read" list, but haven't read it yet. However, I started watching these screencasts on Turing Machines and Lambda Calculus (examples in Python), and they are fantastic: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts/catalog/intro...

Also, I found this blog post good: "Tech Book Face Off: Gödel, Escher, Bach Vs. The Annotated Turing" http://sam-koblenski.blogspot.se/2016/01/tech-book-face-off-...

My recommendation when anyone asks this.

1. Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges http://www.amazon.com/Alan-Turing-Enigma-Inspired-Imitation/...

Definitive and detailed biography.

2. Alan M. Turing by Sara Turing http://www.amazon.com/Alan-M-Turing-Centenary-Edition/dp/110...

Deeply personal biography of her dead son.

3. The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzold http://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Turing-Through-Historic-Comp...

Turing's famous 1936 explained in detail.

⬐ scorpioxy

If someone already read The Enigma, would you recommend them reading any of the other books on that list?

I already feel like I had an intimate look at his life from that book so not sure if the others would add anything to my life.

⬐ willvarfar

These recommendations are spot on.

As so much of Alan's posthumous fame is for cracking the naval enigma in WW2, I'd recommend starting out by first reading "The Code Book" by Simon Singh for general background.

Personally I find Alan's work on ACE the most fascinating. Sadly I can't really find much about it beyond Hodge's biography. Anyone got any good leads re ACE?

⬐ jgrahamc

Alan Turing's Automatic Computing Engine by Jack Copeland http://www.amazon.com/Alan-Turings-Automatic-Computing-Engin...

I suggest reading Turing's paper in the form of Charles Petzold's book The Annotated Turing [0].

0. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0470229055

⬐ SixSigma

Fantastic book, I thought Turing machines were just some abstract concept just exploring computer science until Petzold opened my eyes.

⬐ ramses0

You'll love this video then if you haven't already seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3keLeMwfHY

I read this for the first time in the excellent and surprisingly accessible The Annotated Turing[0], which I can highly recommend. If you're vaguely interested in things like proofs like these or about computability or just Turing's and others' contributions and approaches, the book approaches these things very well without presuming a deep pure mathematical background.

Seriously, read it.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Turing-Through-Historic-Comp...

Another good book by Charles Petzold is The Annotated Turing.

http://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Turing-Through-Historic-Comp...

⬐ jacques_chester

I second this. A fascinating read. Looking forward to getting Code in future.

⬐ epscylonb

I also really enjoyed that book, it was a good mix between the technical stuff and Turings life, I learnt a lot from it.