As of this writing, one of the hot items on Reddit is a link to this image of a cover for an old book, Forth on the Atari: Learning by Using Forth …

(I’ve been excited about programming languages, but the guy on the cover, judging by his shorts, takes excitement about Forth to a whole new level. Or perhaps he’s excited about his new pair programming partner.)

The Reddit entry was subtitled “You ain’t gonna find a Java book with a cover like this”, which led me to ask “What if more computer books had Boris Vallejo/Julie Bell-style paintings on their covers?” In this article, I show some of my best guesses.

Here’s Bruno Preiss’ Data Structures and Algorithms

with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in Java with a re-imagined cover:

(Get it? Data structures? Tree? Get it?)

Here’s one of the classics: “SICP”, or more officially, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs , by Sussman, Abelson and Sussman:

How about one of the hot books of the moment, the Jolt Award-winning Agile Web Development with Rails ?

These new cover designs needn’t to be limited to paintings, just as computer programming books aren’t — consider the wood-cut images of animals on O’Reilly’s books. In looking for new-school computer book images, I stumbled across this pencil illustration with four figures that I thought was perfect for the Gang of Four — here’s a revised cover for Design Patterns :

I don’t think these design should be limited to books you can buy in stores either. Consider the whimsical Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby : what if we took its cartoon foxes and replaced them with the foxes in the painting below?

And finally, if someone writes a book completely devoted to pair programming techniques, I’ve got the perfect Vallejo painting right here: