Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash (2001)

"Is performance still an issue in this era of cheap 486 computers and super-fast Pentium computers? You bet. How many programs that you use really run so fast that you wouldn't be happier if they ran faster? We're so used to slow software that when a compile-and-link sequence that took two minutes on a PC takes just ten seconds on a 486 computer, we're ecstatic—when in truth we should be settling for nothing less than instantaneous response." Not sure if…

Nice to see this here, thanks for sharing it cmsimike. This was a labor of love/appreciation for me a couple of years ago over a Christmas break. I went through a retro gamedev period during that break, read a few books like Masters of Doom, and found myself trying to read through the various (relatively poor quality) electronic copies of the Black Book that were floating around. Yak shaving being what it is, I spent most of my Christmas break…

Okay, I'll take a little time to brag. The word count challenge here got my interest at the time, so I whipped up an assembly language version of it and iterated several times, trying to figure out the value of switching different registers. In the end, I took second place: https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-black-book/blob/4028269f... However, there's an interesting story behind this story. David Stafford, who came in first, posted that he thought he had the fastest solution and bet $100 that nobody could…

This is a great book for 3 reasons: 1) Abrash is actually a good writer. Sometimes, I read the beginnings of chapters just for the stories he tells. 2) It's full of algorithms. Sure, you probably won't be writing your own triangle rasterizer in assembly language, but the algorithms are still important to know. Besides, it has plenty of stuff that's pretty timeless (there is a boyer moore implementation in there). 3) Abrash's philosophy of optimization is the best there…